


For the dead there is no story

by hansbekhart



Series: Kings County [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Brooklyn, F/M, Gen, Holocaust (mention), Interfaith Character, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Character, LIFE Magazine, M/M, Middle Class Bucky Barnes, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, World War II, anti-Semitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:52:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hansbekhart/pseuds/hansbekhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve days ago, Captain America had landed in England, on a ten stop tour to cheer our boys in service, one of the first USO shows to ever brave the front.  Seven days ago, Captain America had gone AWOL in Italy after learning that the 107th had been decimated, and many of its forces captured by the Nazis.  Three days ago, he arrived back in the Allied camp, having crossed thirty miles of heavily fortified enemy territory with nearly two hundred POWs in tow, chief among them one Sgt James Barnes.</p><p>"Well that - that does rather sound like Steve," Mother says.</p><p>-</p><p>Or: the Barnes family, during the events of The First Avenger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that Esther's intentionally sort of a shitty person, in terms of her attitude towards her family, herself and other people. For this story, period typical attitudes includes a pregnant woman smoking a cigarette.
> 
> I owe a ton to some awesome people who helped get me through the torturous process that was writing this goddamn story: my sister [essenceofmeanin](http://essenceofmeanin.tumblr.com/), [defcontwo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo) and [reserve](http://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve), who all held my hand, listened to me complain, and removed my awkward commas when this thing was ready to go. Thanks, bros.

  


The telegrams come on the same day, early in the morning. Not terribly early, but either way Esther is the only one up to hear the mail poke through the little slot on the door and fall with a thump onto the floor of the hall. She'd been drowsing in bed for what felt like hours, watching the curtains drift on the breeze. It was warm the night before, and quiet, but all nights feel quiet now that she's the only one still living at home. 

Through the open windows, she listens to the neighborhood wake up. A few weeks ago, the streets were filled with dancing as the high holidays came to a joyous end, but this morning is a morning like any other. The noises are familiar, comforting: the man two doors down starting the daily abuse of his haggard Model T. Women passing underneath her windows on their way to the market, their low, wide heels clicking on the sidewalk. The hiss and snap of the trackless trolley a block south. Somewhere, someone's playing music.

It's been more than two weeks since they last had a letter from Bucky, the longest ever. Frank has written exactly two letters, one from boot camp and one the night he arrived on his ship, but they've had a steady stream of letters from Europe. Sometimes they've gone a week without, and then a bundle of three or four letters come all at once - a happy occasion. Two nights ago, Rebecca had come for dinner and remarked that the Army was getting awfully lazy about the post, but that's all that's been said about the matter.

The little gate outside shrieks as the postman opens and closes it behind himself, and her heart leaps. A moment later, the satisfying creak of the letterbox, and the imagined thump of letters, too soft to actually be heard. Esther shrugs on her dressing gown, her hair floating around her head in a frizzy blonde halo, and pads downstairs. She sneers at the middle room as she passes through it, like most mornings - it had been her bedroom until Rebecca got married, _finally_ , and it lacks both windows and privacy. She'd moved her things into Rebecca's room - almost twice the size as the hated middle room, with beautiful bay windows that faced the street - the very next day after the wedding. 

Her parents are awake in the back room; she can hear them talking quietly to each other as she steps into the hallway. Her mother laughs, soft, and Esther rolls her eyes. The second and sixth stair creak badly and Esther jumps over each one rather than risk her moment of aloneness. 

She scoops up the mail, feeling for grimy, travel creased envelopes - nothing. Letters from cousins, business partners of her father's, and one lavender scented envelope from her grandmother: endlessly disappointing. She drops the whole mess on the side table and violently reties the sash on her gown. Time for some coffee, if Sgt James Barnes is too important to write to his worried sister.

The front gate shrieks again. Esther pauses, and draws around on one delicate foot to look out the peephole. She sees the uniform first and for a second she can't breathe: for just a second she actually _sees_ Bucky, his cap cocked just so on his head, just like the day he left. No wonder he hadn't written!

She yanks the door open, dressing gown be damned, and startles the hell out of a Western Union messenger coming up their steps. The smile slides right off her face. 

She can feel his eyes move reflexively up and down, taking in the dressing gown and the frizzy halo and the bare feet. "Can I help you?" she asks, aggressive, and he blanches.

"Telegrams for Steven Rogers and," he checks the second slip in his hand, "Naema Barnes?"

He says her mother's name like it's a sound a horse makes, and she glares at him. Dimly, she's aware her heart is pounding, loud enough that he must be able to hear it, even from where he's standing two steps down from their door. She feels like she's been dipped in ice water. "This is the correct address," she informs him, and holds out a hand. He looks at it, and then back up to her face.

"Miss, I'm," he starts, and she sticks the hand out further, shakes it once.

"I'll take them," she says, and as soon as they're in hand she slams the door behind her and leans up against it. She stares into the dim hallway, frowning: wondering why the whole world looked so strange. The telegrams are crumpled up against her breast. The gate grumbles as the Western Union man sees himself out of their little yard. There's sunlight on the bare wood of the hall, streaming in through the windows at the back of the house. 

She's going to feel so silly in a second, when she opens the telegrams and they're nothing. She'll tell Rebecca all about it tonight, when Esther goes to see her and the baby after work: how silly she was, scaring the poor telegram man like that with her bare face and night clothes. She'll tell Bethany and the rest of the girls at the Yard about it too, and they'll all have a good laugh at her expense.

She tears the cover of the first one, getting it open. 

THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT SERGEANT JAMES BARNES WAS REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION ON OCTOBER 8TH IN ITALY, AND IS PRESUMED KILLED. IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION IS RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED.

No matter how long she stares at it, the words don't change.

She sucks in a deep breath and sits down right there in the hallway hard enough to bruise her tailbone. She scrabbles open the other telegram but it only says the same horrible words, and she grinds both fists into her eyes and starts to wail.

She doesn't hear the door to her parents' room open, or feet pounding down the stairs, and for a second she doesn't even feel her father's arms around her. She's crying so hard her hands and face have gone numb from it, and she can't take a breath long enough to tell them what's wrong. But they know, they must know immediately, because her mother starts to scream, and they're all in a heap on the floor of the entryway of their home, and her mother's hair is in her nose, and her face is pressed against her father's bare chest, and their arms are crushing all the air out of her lungs, and the doorbell starts to ring.

It rings and it rings, and they cry and they cry and finally her father leans back and shouts, " _Go away!_ " at the closed door. 

Whoever it is lays off the bell and starts hammering on the door. " _Go away, for the love of God!_ " her father shouts, and as long as Esther lives she never forgets the way his voice breaks on the name of God.

"Mr Barnes, I'm Private Capello, with the Strategic Scientific Reserve," comes a muffled shout from their doorstep, "I have an urgent message about your son James!"

Her mother chokes on a sob, and is up on her feet so fast she almost takes a hank of Esther's hair with her. On the other side of the doorway, Pvt Capello is young and in his hands is another telegram. He's panting like he'd run all the way across Brooklyn to give it to them. He goes dead white when he sees the three of them and the state they're in.

"Please," Mother whispers, and from the floor Esther can't help the whimper in her throat. "Please."

"He's alive," Pvt Capello says. 

Everything after that is a blur of crying and shouting and laughing and more crying and more laughing. When she finally gets a look at the telegram it's the best thing she's ever seen.

PLEASE DON'T WORRY I AM SAFE. STEVE IS WITH ME. WILL EXPLAIN SOON AS I CAN. LOVE BUCKY

It's strange, though - she can't _stop_ crying. It feels like an endless, depthless river, and it comes pouring out of her in between all the laughter and hugging her parents and hugging Pvt Capello, dressing gown be damned. It's all so stupid; she knew Bucky would be okay. Of course Bucky was okay, and he'd probably laugh like hell to see them all upset over nothing. 

That's how she tells it to Bethany at work the next day, on a cigarette break, standing on the water watching train cars come off the river barge from Jersey. She leaves out all the crying, and makes her boring cotton nightgown a silk negligée, and Pvt. Capello a dead ringer for Don Ameche, only younger. 

Bethany rolls her eyes a little, but laughs enough that Esther tells some of the other girls about it after lunch, and the next day when she's visiting with her cousins. For fifteen months it's a funny story, until abruptly it's not.

 

  


-

  


 

The whole family gets the rest of the tale a few days later, in a dour little building near the waterfront that looks like it got caught in the Blitz. There's paper stacked everywhere and Esther could swear there were _bullet holes_ in the wall coming in. They'd heard about a shooting down here, a few months back: a man had fought off a group of saboteurs trying to infiltrate the city power grid. They'd come right near the Navy Yard, and Esther had been terribly disappointed to miss all the action. Maybe this building had caught some of it, which was a thrilling idea. 

Pvt Capello escorts them to a waiting room, where the family is taken in one by one to be interviewed by a trio of very serious looking people in lab coats and one friendly looking man in a neat suit. The lab coats don't introduce themselves, but the man in the suit does, as a Mr Warren Bird.

"How long have you known Steve Rogers?" one of the lab coats asks, very seriously.

"As far back as I can remember," Esther answers when it's her turn, a little uncertainly. The last time she'd been sat down and quizzed about something Steve Rogers had done, she'd been in grade school and it'd been by her mother. She and Rebecca are being interviewed together, which is a relief; Esther certainly didn't wake up that morning expecting to sit alone in a scary little room with four strange men. 

"Steve's been a part of our family forever," Rebecca says. She'd left the baby out with their mother in the waiting room, and her empty hands twist anxiously in her lap. She looks thin today, and tired - like maybe the baby is eating her up from the inside. "He and Bucky have been inseparable since grade school.'

"So we've heard," Lab Coat says, dryly. "And what, exactly, would you say is the nature of their relationship?"

Esther frowns, confused. The question doesn't make much sense. "Steve is Bucky's best friend," she says, and misses the way Rebecca's eyes dart down to the floor, expressionless. "They're like brothers."

"Now now," Mr Bird says, one hand lifted negligently up to stop Lab Coat from asking anything else. "There's no need to be coarse in front of the ladies, is there?" He turns a sunny smile to them. "What a lovely family you have. You must be very proud of your brother, I’m sure.” 

He has a flat sort of way of speaking, like he’s from nowhere in particular. His teeth are very white and Esther feels a little better when he turns the force of them on her. “I see you’re quite the little patriot,” he says, gesturing at her shirtfront.

She brings a hand up to touch the pins there, self conscious. “Yes sir,” she answers, with a little smile. “Just doing my part.” A pin for blood donation, one for her participation in the rubber drive last month, and the red white and blue _V for Victory!_ pin that Steve gave her a year or so ago. Her work badge just below it, forgotten when they’d been all bundled into a car that morning. It was a nice photo of her, at least.

“You work down at the Navy Yard, is that correct? As a shipfitter?”

“Yes sir,” she says again, and blushes when the man’s smile only broadens. 

“We’ve got a regular Rosie here,” he says to the other men. “The Senator will be thrilled. How about you, sweetheart? You doing your part to win the war?” he says, switching that smile over to Rebecca. 

Her fingers clench the fabric of her skirt. “I,” she says, and stops. 

“She's married,” Esther informs them, leaping to the rescue. "She just had a baby."

"Motherhood," Mr Bird says, "the most important job of all."

Two of the lab coats snicker. The third rolls his eyes impatiently. "We're on a schedule," he says, and Mr Bird nods, like it'd slipped his mind.

So they ask: have you ever been contacted by a member of HYDRA? Have you ever heard of Project: Rebirth? Have you ever harbored seditious thoughts towards the US government? Have you ever met a man named so and so, or a woman named such and such. It's like something out of a spy novel, or one of Bucky's pulp magazines. It goes on and on until Esther's head is aching from it. It starts to feel like these men are playing a practical joke on them, which is confirmed when they're brought back out to their parents (Rebecca reaching for the baby like a lifeline), and a manila folder is slid across the table to them, with two photos inside.

The top photo is of Steve Rogers. So is, they tell the Barnes family, the second one.

Father picks up the second photo and studies it for a long moment, and passes it to Mother without comment. She lays it back down on the table after barely a glance, and Esther picks it up, holds it so Rebecca can see too. There's a stretch of contemplative silence. Rebecca rocks the baby, still sleeping, on her lap. The men on the other side of the table - in Army uniforms this time - stare at them, waiting.

"That's stupid," Esther tells them flatly, and her mother hisses sharply at her. "It is stupid, though," she hisses back, flushing. The man in the second photo has Steve's face, sure, but a body like Charles Atlas or a Coney Island strongman. It's a trick with cameras, she's seen it done before. 

They knew Steve had gotten into the Army, somehow - he'd shown up at the house early one morning in a big rush, handing over the keys to he and Bucky's little apartment, and asking them to look after the place or pack it up if Uncle Abraham needed to rent to someone else while they were away. He wouldn't tell them where he was going - said he _couldn't_ , with that little grin of his, like it was his little secret. He'd barely stayed long enough for a cup of coffee and some scrambled eggs, and even that much Mother had had to coax him into.

"It's impossible," Father says. "Steve is - well, I don't know if you've met him, but he's certainly not - " He makes a gesture with both hands, but leaves the sentence unfinished.

"It was an experiment," one of the soldiers says. "One that can't be repeated."

"Have you heard of," - this soldier sighs, heavily - "Captain America?"

Of course they have. He's been in all of the reels lately. His posters and comics blanketed Brooklyn a few months ago. There's one outside the men's washroom at Esther's work, reminding folks coming out that disease is an agent of sabotage, and they should wash their hands. Esther has one of the nicer ones pinned up in her room, next to the Saturday Evening Post cover with Rosie on it. _He'll Never Quit!_ it says, _And Neither Shall We!_ Esther and Bethany had gone to see the USO show at Madison Square Garden only last month. Esther had wanted to go and get his autograph, but Bethany had put her foot down and said no, absolutely not.

Twelve days ago, Captain America had landed in England, on a ten stop tour to cheer our boys in service, one of the first USO shows to ever brave the front. Seven days ago, Captain America had gone AWOL in Italy after learning that the 107th had been decimated, and many of its forces captured by the Nazis. Three days ago, he arrived back in the Allied camp, having crossed thirty miles of heavily fortified enemy territory with nearly two hundred POWs in tow, chief among them one Sgt James Barnes.

"Well that - that does rather sound like Steve," Mother says.

The next steps are still in discussion, but Captain America is a public figure - and he'll continue to be. As Captain America's family has all tragically passed away, the Barnes family may be asked to participate in efforts to promote the war effort on the home front. They will be required to report if any suspicious characters approach them, or if they suspect they are being watched, or if someone tries to harm them. For their own safety they'll be monitored by agents of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, which seems at odds with being asked to report being spied on, in Esther's opinion. On his ship, Frank is receiving similar information, and similar instructions. 

"But what about Bucky?" Rebecca asks, and the soldiers all look at each other. One of them nods, and then turns to look over his shoulder and sends a nod to Pvt Capello, waiting quietly in the corner next to a metal door, opposite the one they'd come in. Pvt Capello goes into the other room, nods at someone inside, and shuts the door behind him.

"Just a moment," the soldier says, and unexpectedly smiles kindly at them. "We have a nice surprise for you."

"Are Bucky and Steve on the other side of that door?" Esther asks, and this time gets a reproving " _Esther,_ " from her father, but the soldier only laughs.

"Just in spirit," he says. "We've arranged for a call to our headquarters in London, so you can speak to him."

The resultant noise wakes the baby, and they spend a few minutes hushing her back to a sleepy, boneless state before Pvt Capello returns with a smile on his face, and ushers them into the back room. 

There are seats set up for each one of them, huddled in a little ring around the radio, which is smaller than Esther was expecting, to call all the way across the Atlantic. The operator glances over his shoulder when they come in, and smiles at them. Everyone's all smiles now, like it's their special surprise too. Esther's gripping her father's hand so hard she feels she might break his fingers off. 

"Copy," says the operator, into his microphone, and then, "hold the line." He stands up and pulls his chair back a little, gesturing for Mother to take it. She does, tucking her skirt carefully under her legs and then smoothing it down her knees. Her hands are steady when she looks up at the operator for instruction.

"It's connected," he tells her, as the rest of them take their seats, the men with the SSR standing a respectful distance away. "They'll speak when they're ready."

The radio squawks to life with a horrible burst of static, and then is quiet for a moment. Nobody breathes. 

The last time Esther saw her brother was at the Navy Yards, three piers away from where she works every day. The day had become hot afterwards but that morning it was cool and pleasant on the water, and all around them were people kissing and hugging and crying. The baby was a month or so from being born but even so Rebecca had seemed absolutely enormous, swaying tiredly on her feet as the crowd surged around them. Everyone had come except for Frank, who'd been just finishing up his training all the way in California: their parents, Uncle Abraham, Steve, Rebecca's husband Sam, Sam's parents (and even at the time she'd noticed how glad they seemed, that it wasn't their son getting on the boat and sailing off to war). Bucky had looked so handsome, so neat and well turned out, and Esther could have burst with pride. He'd hugged her long and hard, and hugged Rebecca so carefully, and saved his longest and tightest hug for their mother.

"See you soon," Steve had told him, and Bucky had shaken his head and hugged him too, just as tight as the rest of them.

"Hello? Anyone there?" says the radio, with the same voice that used to read her stories and sing her to sleep. Esther grips the seat of her chair, tight. "I was told there'd be some Barnses on this radio."

Both their parents talk at once. Father in English but Mother with a torrent of Yiddish, half in tears. Esther opens her mouth but is cut off with a vicious pinch to her thigh. "They already know we're Jews," Rebecca hisses into her ear.

"No, we're not," Esther retorts, but Rebecca's already turning back towards the radio with one last angry shush. Esther risks a look over her shoulder at the men from the SSR - they're frowning a little, but not like anyone thinks they're German spies or something terrible, and anyway Bucky's answering in kind.

"Slowly, slowly," he's saying, "one at a time. The connection's not too good, I can hardly hear you. Hey, hey, it's all right, I'm all right. Mame, please don't cry, please?"

"They told us you'd been taken prisoner by the Nazis," Father says. He doesn't speak it too well, and he says prisoner in English. Mother gasps out a little sob, and Father puts an arm around her, blocking out Esther's view of the microphone. It doesn't matter - it's not like she can _see_ Bucky, but she twists forward in her seat anyway, trying to get close.

There's a gusty sort of crackle, like Bucky's exhaled into the microphone, on his side of the Atlantic. His voice sounds strange: it fades in and out like an ocean wave, but even when the radio signal is strong he sounds ... different. "I'm okay now," he says. "You don't need to worry about any of the rest of it. I'm fine. Didn't they tell you? Steve came all the way from Brooklyn to save me."

"Is that really him?" Esther asks, in English, a little loud so maybe Bucky can hear her. "They showed us pictures. Is it a trick?

"No trick, Bug," he answers, and laughs. It hurts to hear him laughing, in a strange way; for a few minutes she'd really thought she'd never hear that again. "It's really him. I guess I'd know, if anyone would."

"Well," Esther says, "tell him he looks very handsome." 

"I ain't telling him _nothin',_ " Bucky vows, but faint over the radio they can hear Steve laughing, there somewhere, wherever Bucky is. "Yeah, yuck it up," they hear Bucky say, presumably to Steve and whoever else may be in the room with him, and something unintelligible in reply.

"Steve says hello," Bucky says, back to them, "and I'll say hello back to him from everyone. We got Steve to thank for this call - he's got some Senator who's trying to pin a bunch of medals on him, I guess. They're lettin’ us have the run of the place. The other guys are getting calls to their family too, later on, and we all got leave for tonight. Perks of being a celebrity. Second hand, I mean."

There's some muffled noise on the other end of the radio, like someone's talking to Bucky, but it's too low to make out. 

"Sorry about that," Bucky says, after a moment. "I don't got too long to talk. They got a lot more important things to do with this radio than let me yammer at it."

"Are you coming home?" Mother asks. "Surely they'll send you home, you've done enough."

"I - I don't know, Ma," Bucky says. "They're still figuring it out. I don't know that I'm allowed to talk about it. I'll send you a good letter in the next few days and explain everything I can, okay?"

"But you've given enough," Mother says, and Father passes a soothing hand over her hair, around her shoulders. 

"It's," Bucky starts, but the next few words are lost to noise: a sharp snatch of orchestra music, a few low words in an English sounding voice. "- don't have a choice," Bucky's saying, when the his voice cuts back in. "I can't go home without seeing it through."

There's not much to say to that, though of course Mother tries to anyway. "They sent us a telegram saying you were _dead,_ " Mother says. "You'd put your mother through that again? James, _please_ \- come home, we need you _here._ "

Esther shakes her head, sneaks a little glance over at Pvt Capello and the other men from the SSR. They're all standing and listening, heads bent forward, like they're watching something important instead of their little family drama playing out over the radio. It makes Esther proud, to see them in attendance, with all the gravity Bucky deserves, him a war hero and all that. It's fitting.

It's so easy to imagine Bucky, what he must be doing right now, how it must be over there: the wry, indulgent smile on Bucky's face as he listens patiently to his mother over the radio, still as a statue in the middle of a swirl of wartime action. Like Humphrey Bogart, a cigarette in his hand, important looking maps strewn all over tables with serious looking Army men bending over them. Steve at Bucky's side, like always, but tall and strong and more handsome than ever. The two of them just as good as anyone, even if maybe they were poor and with Jewish relatives. Maybe even better.

"I saw - Ma, I saw a lot of bad things, when they had me," Bucky says. "The Nazis, they got weapons you wouldn't even believe exist. I can't - I'm not able to say too much about it. But we can't let them win this. It'd be the end of everything. I'm sorry, Ma. Unless they order it, we gotta stay." 

"But why does it have to be you?" Mother says, soft. 

Bucky's silent for a moment. "I don't know," he says, and he sounds tired. "But it does. If it was anyone but Steve, you know I'd -" 

He's interrupted by a squeal of noise - this time from their side of the radio. The baby's woken up, and is squirming upright with a rumbly, displeased howl. 

Immediately there's silence from the radio, and then a crackling noise as Bucky breathes out. "Is that - is that Becca's baby?" he asks, hushed. They all look at Rebecca and the baby, propped in her lap, and as if on cue the baby laughs loud and long. On the other side of the world, Bucky laughs back, and for the first time sounds just like her brother again.

"Oh my god," he breathes. It's hardly much more than a whisper. "That's the most gorgeous sound I ever heard. What's her name, Becca? What do you call her?"

"Leah," Rebecca says, and Father stands so she can take his seat, bring the baby up closer to the microphone.

On the radio there's a burst of static and then Bucky, repeating eagerly, "Leba? Her name is Leba? That's beautiful, Becca. Leba, honey, I'm your uncle. Welcome to the family, sweetheart. Oh my god, oh my god."

"It's Leah," Esther says, but Bucky doesn't hear. The baby burbles in Rebecca's lap, reaching for her toes, and Bucky laughs again. It's a ragged, watery sort of sound - distorted by the speakers and the millions of miles it had to cross to get to them.

Gusty, crackling silence on the radio. "Bucky?" Rebecca asks.

"Yeah," comes the response, quiet. "I'm here. What's she look like, Becca?"

"Like me," Rebecca tells him, and the baby grumbles a little bit in her grip. "She looks just like me. She's got the bluest eyes and she's so good, Bucky. She's so smart - she wants to walk and talk already. I wish - Bucky, I wish so much you could meet her."

"I am," Bucky says, sounding wounded. "I'm meeting her now. You got no idea how - I'm the luckiest guy in the world today, Becca. You got no idea. I thought I'd never -" 

More silence. Faint, in the background, they hear Steve's voice: "Buck? You okay?"

"James?" Father asks, here at home in Brooklyn. "James, are you there?"

"My time's up - they need the radio back," Bucky says, after a moment. His voice comes clear and steady through the radio. "Please write to me. About every little thing, I wanna know about all of it. I'll write back as often as I can. And don't worry about us, okay? I got Steve looking after me now."

"You look out for him too," Mother says, as sternly as she can while she's still wiping tears off her cheeks. “You look after each other.” 

"Can't help doin’ that," Bucky says, and sighs. "I love you," he says, in Yiddish this time. "I love you. And I miss you all so much more than I can tell you. I'll dream about coming home every night 'til I can. Every single night."

"You do that," Rebecca says, firm. The baby reaches out for the microphone and gasps when she has it in her hands, just the softest little sound - too soft for Bucky to hear, probably. "You come home and you meet your niece for real. You hear me, James Barnes? You get home safe for us."

"I guess I have to," Bucky says. The radio crackles again, a long buzz of quiet like maybe Bucky's gonna say something else, but it cuts off abruptly - no goodbye or nothing.

 

  


  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The screen flickers to life, and after a second the trumpets sound and one of the new reels comes flickering on. It says, in big bold letters: THE HOWLING COMMANDOS! AMERICA'S CRACK FIGHTERS!

  
_  
11/12/43_

_Dear Family,_

_We are leaving London in the next few days so I wanted to write a letter while I'm still able to send it. Hopefully it will reach you sometime before Christmas, or at least next Christmas hah hah. I do not know where we are being sent, but I do know that (you will laugh at this I'm sure) there will be a film crew from the propaganda office there to meet us! Since Steve is so famous the rest of us have to be as well, it turns out. Captain America went and found some friends in the woods, and now we will all boost morale on the home front together, even if two of us are not even American and do not care, and the rest of us do not care either._

_I am sorry to tell you we will not just be USO stars until the end of the war. We will continue to be soldiers, except for Steve, who was ██████████████ but will be soon. He is now my commanding officer, which is the thrill of his little life, let me tell you. We will be leading a team █████ that I ████████████████ but I am sure you will see it in the pictures._

_We will also be guest stars in Steve's comic book - which is very funny to me, because they had given us the Captain America comic but I had never read it because it was very cold at the time and I (girls, look away) stuffed all the pages in my pants to keep warm. But apparently it has the whole story of little Stevie Rogers from Brooklyn, who became a science experiment to fight Nazis. I can't wait to see what they do to me._

_You will not believe how different Steve is now. I have seen it but I still do not believe it. I keep talking to his chest, because he is now taller than me and ████████████████. It is the strangest feeling in the world. He says he will never be sick again and so far this is true._

_I miss you all every day, especially now my little Leba, who I hope is taking good care of everyone and keeping you cheerful. I am sorry to tell you that when the Army thinks you are killed they throw away all your stuff, so I no longer have any of your old letters to cheer me up. I hope you will send new ones very soon. It is hard to be here and hard to fight even if it is the right thing to do, but knowing that there is still another world out there where I am your son or brother and ████ helps like nothing else can._

_All my love,_

_Bucky_

_PS. Guess who I met? Howard Stark, the inventor! He's awful fun although he helped turn Steve into a giant so of course I owe him a good punch on the mouth. I am joking, I probably will not punch him in the mouth, he is apparently very valuable to ███████████._  


  


-

  
The wind chills her through, even safe from the rain under the broad marquee. She wraps her coat more tightly around herself, shores up the edges of her scarf around her face. She wants a cigarette - something to pass the time, something to wake her up a little, something to calm her down maybe - but she knows what her mother would say if she came back in stinking of smoke.

Out from under the curtain of rain, dripping off the marquee bulbs - glittering even though it's early in the morning and they're not lit up - Flatbush Avenue is a grimy, gray spectacle, full of people bustling importantly about. The snow from last week has become a brown slushy puddle stretching from one end of the avenue to the other. It's impossible to see how deep each point is - where the broken paving slabs end, dropping you suddenly ankle deep in the collected filth of Brooklyn. She had slipped coming in and her left boot is still wet from it, a needling cold that has her curling her toes trying to keep warm. 

Across the road, she sees Bethany and another girl come up out of the subway steps. They wave hello when they spot her, and then stare despondently at the wide murky slush all around them. 

A few minutes ago, a pair of men had stopped and help a trio of White ladies cross the road, but no one looks twice at Bethany and the other girl. They step down slowly and cautiously into the street, gripping an umbrella between them, their other arms held out for balance. They laugh the whole way across, and Esther laughs to see them. She gives Bethany a big hug once they're safely on her side of the street, ignoring the way Bethany abruptly stops laughing and looks both ways before returning it. 

"This is my sister, Marie," Bethany says, stepping back, and Esther and Marie shake hands. Out of work, Bethany is dressed in a neat coat, a little threadbare, her hair drawn back into two tidy braids. Marie looks to be a little younger - maybe still in school, but Esther has a hard time telling with Negroes - and she's pretty, but not as pretty as Bethany.

"Thank you so much for coming," Esther says, politely. She’s flushed and bouncing on her toes, abruptly too excited to be still. She finds she can't stop smiling at Bethany, even if both girls are looking at her with patient, bemused expressions. "Come on, let's get out of this nasty rain."

The other girls gasp when they come into the wide, sweeping lobby, and Esther grins and does a little spin - like she hadn't done the same thing herself an hour ago. "Isn't it amazing?" she asks. "My sister's husband's brother is the manager here, he arranged it specially for us."

The outside of Loew's King Theater is grand enough, but the inside is even more so. It's like being in a palace, with huge curving ceilings inlaid with gold, intricately carved banisters, heavy red curtains draping between each staircase like a maharajah's palace. Or maybe something Russian, with a princess - something rococo, or Baroque - if Steve were here, he'd know, but Esther's never had the same head for art. She feels giddy, watching Bethany crane her neck to take it all in. The only thing wrong with it is that it's full of Jews, who turn and look at them with a distant, flat curiosity.

"My sister's husband's family," Esther explains hurriedly, even though half of them are cousins of hers, probably. "Gawkers," she confides, when Bethany looks askance at her. "Most of them never even met Bucky and Steve except for when my sister was married last year. Shall we go find our seats?"

"Sure," Bethany says slowly, and there's an awkward moment where they go for the staircase and Esther makes for the main doors to the theatre, but after a second they follow, shooting pointed looks at each other that she fails to catch.

In the theatre itself are more Jews and finally some respectable looking relatives, clustered like satellites around Esther's family. It's louder in here, full of mostly women chattering excitedly, looking up and around at the ceiling and all the grand decor. Sam and Rebecca are a distance away, on the right hand aisle instead of the left where everyone else is, so deep in conversation that neither one of them look up. Uncle Abraham is the only man braving the hen house, standing with Mother up against the stage, their heads close together and faces serious. He leans back and smiles broadly at Esther and her friends as they draw near.

"Hello, bubeleh," he says to her, and wraps her up in a big hug. He directs his next words to everyone: "Isn't this exciting? My nephew and his little friend are famous!" 

He puts an arm around Esther's shoulders and he shakes her lightly, for emphasis. "Too bad you didn't marry Steve before he went off to war, hmm?"

Mother's thinned lips show exactly what she has always thought of that idea, but she's still more or less smiling so it doesn't sting so bad. Bucky had _hated_ it, even back when Esther was just a kid, something a little sharp in the way he teased her about Steve that had her in tears once or twice.

There’s a round of handshaking as she introduces Bethany and her sister, and a round of polite small talk. The women around them are looking out of the corner of their eyes, not as obvious as the men in the lobby, but all they’re getting is a straight back and a lifted chin out of Bethany as she answers Uncle Abraham's questions. She and Marie were born in Brooklyn, and grew up in Weeksville. No sir, not far at all from where Uncle Abraham and where Esther’s family live. Yes sir, Bethany works as a bucker. She and Esther have been partnered since they both started down at the Yard last year. They have an older brother in the Pacific, and they’re very proud of him, of course.

"Are your other friends coming?" Mother asks Esther, quietly.

Esther shrugs and glances away. Rebecca hasn't even looked over once; she's just standing there staring at the ground while Sam talks at her. "They were all busy," she says. "Extra shifts at the Yard."

"Ah," Mother says, and snakes a hand out, missing Esther's shoulder by inches as she bends to tie up her boot.

Further conversation is put paid when Sam steps up onto the stage and asks everyone to take their seats. "Big man," Abraham says, in an undertone - in Yiddish, Esther realizes after a moment, low enough that only the goyim around them are close enough to hear. "Too big to serve his country, I suppose."

"Hush," Mother says, but she looks troubled too - her eyes on Rebecca, standing all by herself even though Sam has gone off to tell the people in the lobby that it's time for the show, her arms wrapped around her thin waist like her family's not standing there, waiting for her to join them. She doesn't come over even though Esther saves a seat for her, right up front - she sits over with Sam's parents instead, silent, letting Mrs Taub hold the baby. 

Annoyed, Esther shares her candy with Bethany and Marie instead. "Steve used to be only as tall as me," she confides in them. 

Bethany shakes her head, her lips quirked a little in a way that Esther can’t help but return. Her smile is one of the things Esther likes best about Bethany - that and she’s too nice to laugh at anyone, especially to their face. "That man at the USO show lifted a motorcycle over his head," she says. “You big enough to do that?”

"It's true though," Esther insists. "He and I were the same height since I was thirteen years old. They gave him all kinds of special powers when he became Captain America, so that he could win the war against the Axis.” This had been the theme of the two reels they’ve already seen, the made up ones that showed Captain America storming beaches in the Pacific or foiling sabotage on the home front, so Esther is on stable ground here. 

“So you were gonna marry him?” Bethany asks after a moment, turning her face up to stare at the blank screen.

"Yup," Esther says, as the lights fall. "We were in love."

The screen flickers to life, and after a second the trumpets sound and one of the new reels comes flickering on. It says, in big bold letters: THE HOWLING COMMANDOS! AMERICA'S CRACK FIGHTERS! 

And then there they are, larger than life.

At that moment it's perfectly clear exactly which portions of the crowd belong to Esther's family, since a great big cheer goes up, and everyone is laughing and smiling to see Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers up on on the big screen, like they were matinee idols. Even Bethany and Marie gasp out loud, looking up at the lingering shot of the titular Howling Commandos - Steve and Bucky's team, just like in his letter! The best our country has to offer! Tasked with the singular job of taking down HYDRA, the evil Nazi scientists! Offering up their all to keep America free from Nazi tyranny!

It's exciting to see Steve - even disguised in the Captain America costume, it's Steve's jaw, Steve's smile, set seamlessly into a body that towers above the rest of his soldiers - but they were forewarned about how Steve Rogers was changed. Esther still has his poster up on her wall, even though it feels rather silly and she'd rather die than have Bucky find out about it, so she knows exactly what Steve looks like now, and it's not so bad. It's almost more funny than anything, how handsome he looks - how confident and calm he seems, up there in black and white, like this was the body he'd had all along and everyone had just been too dumb to notice. 

It's Bucky who looks like a stranger. Like a stranger with unsmiling eyes and a big long gun slung casually over his shoulder, like it's something that belongs there. 

"He looks thin," Mother whispers, and takes Esther's hand without looking away from the screen. Esther lets her do it, even though it's not true, not exactly. Bucky is as big and broad shouldered as ever. 

No one else seems worried at all - they're all still laughing and smiling, talking like they're at a party. They watch each and every one of the reels through, and then they start up a shout to the projectionist and watch CAPTAIN AMERICA! AMERICA'S OWN SON! again, because in that one the narrator says "Hailing from New York City, Bucky Barnes is Captain America's right hand man!" and they get to see Bucky shoot ten targets clean through the heart of each.

The whole family and all its assorted cousins and friends and gawkers spill out of the theater afterwards, chattering excitedly, overflowing with stories of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, those trouble makers, those nice boys from the neighborhood. He used to help me with my groceries. Such a sorry thing that happened to his mother. What nice folks the Barnes are, to take him in like they did. What a good boy, so handsome and well mannered. He was so patient with the little ones, my youngest had quite the crush on him. He taught my boy how to pitch a baseball a few summers back. Remember all those fights they got into? I swear he always seemed to have a black eye. Such polite young men. And would you look at them now, those Brooklyn boys. Just look at them now.

It stays with her, even weeks later, standing in the cold with Bethany and everyone else who's spent the last months working on the great battleship sitting placidly in the harbor, newly christened as the USS Missouri. There are hundreds of people crowded shoulder to shoulder to listen to the speeches, to see the President - the _President of the United States!_ \- who has come all the way to Brooklyn to launch their ship. There's a crackle of electricity in the air that she can feel thrumming all the way to her toes, shared with everyone around as they look upon this grand thing they made, this ship that will help to end the war. 

Like out of a film, as soon as they break the bottle across that big gray hull the sunlight peels away from the clouds and rushes out over the crowd and the harbor and Manhattan off in the distance, turning the whole sky into a bright and glittering promise. All around her people have little pins with blue and red circles and a white star right in the middle, and her heart feels like it’s going to swell right out of her chest, right below where she’s got one of her own. She wants to tell each and every one of them, _that's Steve Rogers’ shield you're wearing, and don’t you forget it. He’s one of ours._  


  


-

  
__  
2/14/44

_Dear Family,_

_Thank you for the letters that you sent. They caught up with me last week all at once and I read them as soon as I could manage. As soon as she will sit still for it I hope you will send me a photo of my Leba so I can always remind myself of the good things to come home for. Please spoil her rotten for me until I can do it myself._

_Mame I am sorry to hear that that your arthritis is paining you, but happy that Grandma is back on her feet after her fall on the ice. Steve asked me to tell you thank you for the well wishes and also the socks. No one else has received hand knitted socks and you better believe everyone is very jealous of us. Please give my love to Grandma, and also to Frankie in your next letter._

_Bug I hope the men you work with are better able to control themselves in the future. If Steve was still in Brooklyn I would ask him to go and rough them up for you. As it is I showed him your letter and he has promised to go and kick some heads in as soon as possible. These are his words and I thought you would appreciate them. Until one of us is there to help you will simply have to continue kicking in your own heads, but I know you are more than capable._

_Becca I wish I knew why your letter was so short. Whatever was scratched out at the bottom I hope you will explain in the next letter, unless you are also being censored by the Army as well. Please let me listen at least even if I can't send Steve to solve your problems either._

_I am glad that you all enjoyed the films. I have not seen them myself and do not expect to, with how often we are ███████. We are not attached to a regular unit, but sent to where █████. It is not much like being a real soldier, at least in my experience. Steve has seen them and says they are excellent, except that my ugly mug is all over them, hah hah._

_We eat better food than I've seen since Brooklyn. We have supplies and reinforcements when we need them. When we are not ████████████████ we are quartered as if we are all officers, or royalty, even though our unit is composed of two foreigners, a Negro, a Japanese, a Jew and Steve Rogers. So in that aspect I am very well and warm and well fed and looked after, which I know is what you most want to hear. We are very important to the war effort._

_Maybe some day I will be able to tell you about the rest of it, if I can think of how to explain. Until then,_

_All my love,_

_Bucky_  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You may as well be a million miles away from the excess of New York City and its Manhattan night clubs,"_ she reads, and raises an eyebrow at Esther. _"The glittering lights of Times Square do not shine here, nor could they outshine the honest, hard work being done to win the war. Here is where Captain Steven Rogers, better known as Captain America, was born and raised - in a humble neighborhood just a stone's throw away from the bustling Brooklyn Navy Yard."_

  
  
"Lift your chin up a little, darling. That's it. A little more to the left. Now hold it."

The camera clicks and whirrs. Esther holds the pose, waiting, and a moment later they take another shot and then move forward to reset. Her hair is fluffed. Her lipstick is retouched. The riveting gun - so much heavier sitting in her lap than in her arms, being used - is adjusted to sit a little higher, closer to her breasts. 

"You look gorgeous, Rosie," Mr Bird calls.

"So tell me, how did Captain America and Bucky Barnes become friends?" Miss Faith asks. She's not as glamorous as Esther pictured a photographer from LIFE Magazine would be. She's wearing a plaid suit and her hair is done up in an untidy bun beneath her hat, and she's already stepped in two oily puddles, which have left stains on her low-heeled shoes.

Esther is seven years younger than Bucky and there has never been a time in her memory that Steve was not there: at family dinners, helping Bucky babysit, sleeping at their house when his mother was working nights, holding Esther's hand as they crossed the street. He's in all of Bucky's stories, but this one has never actually come up. It's probably very boring.

"Steve was getting beat up by some bullies," Esther answers, holding perfectly still as the photographer leans squinting into her face, adjusts the big lamp over her shoulder, leans back in and then steps down off the truck bed they've got her posed in, surrounded by machine parts and glimmering metal. "He tried to stick up for some younger kids, but they were too much for him. Bucky saved him. He said he'd never seen anyone stand up to those bullies before, and he couldn't stand by and watch."

"By all accounts, they're very close," Miss Faith says. 

"Oh yes," Esther says. "Steve is practically a part of our family." 

"How would you describe Steve Rogers?" Miss Faith asks, with a dull, nicotine-stained smile. The camera clicks and clicks. They shot her earlier near the doorway to the metal plating workshops, hands tucked into her pants pockets underneath the arched doorway, ankles crossed. "The world is dying to know more about the man behind the shield."

"Steve's the bravest person I ever met," Esther answers. She picks out Bethany in the crowd, standing a little ways away from the rest of the girls in their sub-workshop, and drops a wink her way. The camera comes up quick and catches it, but she gets a big sunny grin in return. "He was always sick when he was a kid. He almost died a couple times, but it never slowed him down, even a little. He'd be back up and on his feet as soon as his ma'd let him. He's really smart too. He'd rather spend his money on art books and pencils before anything else."

The photographer stops shooting for a moment to consult with Mr Bird. They look out over the Yard - scanning past the crowd of people loafing around, watching the proceedings with avid interest - and point over towards Dry Dock No 5, where two halves of damaged ships are being slowly mended into one. Then they look back at her, intently. Mr Bird lifts a hand, does a little half circle with it around his face, and the photographer nods.

"Does he have any special ladies in his life?" Ms Faith asks, and the mental picture is so funny that Esther actually laughs right out loud. She remembers her manners just enough to not blurt out the first thing she thinks, which is _not unless Bucky counts._

"No ma'am," she answers. "Steve is very shy, particularly around women. Bucky always had a lot of girlfriends, though. He's very popular."

"He's quite handsome," Miss Faith says, which is true but also sounds like an insinuation, to Esther's ears. "Are you ever afraid, to have your brother fighting in the war?"

"Gosh no, Bucky and Steve have looked out for each other since they were kids. They'll be fine," Esther answers, her eyes wide. Later, she'll realize she might have added, "I have two brothers fighting in the war, and I'm sure Frank will be fine also."

Mr Bird helps her down from the truck bed. The cameras and lighting are disassembled with dizzying speed, and everyone picks up and moves off towards Dry Dock No 5, the crowd trailing along behind. It's the most exciting thing that's happened at the Yard since they launched the Missouri.

It's a nice spring day, and the gentle river breeze would lift her hair off her shoulders if it wasn't so heavily lacquered with spray. It feels sweet enough on the nape of her neck, though. They set the camera for close ups against the backdrop of the Williamsburg Bridge over her left shoulder, shrouded with tarps to block the eyes of saboteurs from seeing into the Yard.

Press normally aren't allowed in past the big gates on Flushing Ave. No one is, really, if they don't have legitimate business being there. LIFE Magazine had had to get special permission from the Yard, to shoot Esther at work - but what a _lovely_ story it would be, they'd said, that the baby sister of a Howling Commando was also doing all she could to beat the Nazis and win the war. How much it would lift the spirits of all the good people waiting for their sons, brothers and husbands to come home, to see a cheerful, beautiful girl who believed in her brother and the sacrifices he and so many like him have made. It had helped to have the family's enthusiastic consent as well - even from Mother, which Esther hadn't expected. 

Mingled in with the crowd are grim guardians from the Navy police, keeping a close eye on the photographer and his assorted assistants. Esther watches them, in between smiling for the camera and answering Miss Faith's questions, a little curious. She hasn't spotted any of the SSR's agents yet, but Rebecca's husband Sam has complained about the one stationed down the block from them. They hadn't even had the grace to send someone who would blend into a the neighborhood, Rebecca reported.

"Let's hear about you," Miss Faith says. "What are your plans after the war is over?"

"I want to go to college," Esther says. "I wanted to, before - but I knew I had to do my part for the war effort first. I'd like to be an engineer."

The photographer's eyebrows go up from where he's got his face squished tight behind his camera. "That's sweet," Miss Faith says, and her voice is kind.

"Look towards me," the photographer says. "Chin down - just a hair. Now give me your biggest smile - pretend I'm your sweetheart, back from the front."

He's not very good looking, but he is blond - and with the camera in his face it's not too hard to pretend.  


  


-

  
The air above Long Meadow is crowded with kites and the shouts of children and young people. Dogs run short circles around their owners; couples kiss under the trees. A gramophone battles two ladies with guitars for dominance of the open, rolling fields. It's a cool, breezy day, the kind of day people talk about all winter long, that only lasts for a few weeks before true summer hits and makes life unbearable - and Prospect Park is full of people making the most of it.

Esther had come in from the north side, from the little roadway sandwiched in with the staggering gold facade of the Brooklyn Public Library and the bustle of cars roaring out of the roundabout and onto Flatbush Ave. She comes this way often, to volunteer in the victory garden behind the Brooklyn Museum, or to spend her ration coupons in the better shops on the other side of the park, or sometimes just to walk. 

When she was young - she's told - they lived down by the water, in squat tenement buildings crowded with other families, and they moved every year or two when they had to. There were no trees, and no brownstones there, just poor people and the smell of fish dying on the docks, and mangy dogs, one of whom bit her on the arm when she was four. She doesn't remember it, but she's got a beautiful scar on her arm to prove it.

She and Rebecca have got a spot to themselves up in a shady little hollow up above the meadow, and a picnic basket and a happy, burbling baby who woke from her nap cheerful and talkative. They'd had a package arrive with yesterday's post - a package, with three letters inside (two from Bucky and one from Steve) and a drawstring bag that had contained a cluster of beautiful and mysterious glass necklaces, which the letters did not explain. Esther's lying on her belly, using one of them to amuse the baby. Each bead throws a kaleidoscope of light onto her round little face, and she laughs sleepily up at Esther, letting the beads drift over her hands and tummy.

"Essie," Esther complains. "They called me _Essie_."

"Essie's a lovely name," Rebecca says, absently, flipping through her magazine.

The baby grabs for the necklace and stuffs as much as she can into her mouth. "No, Leba," Esther scolds, and pulls it away. "You'll choke. I don't _go_ by Essie, though. I didn't say they could _call_ me that. They didn't even ask."

"Well, you look beautiful," Rebecca says, and pats her head soothingly. She's sitting up like a proper adult, her legs folded primly to the side, covered entirely by her long skirt. She'd arrived to their picnic wearing a scarf over her hair, like one of the haredim down south of Eastern Parkway, but she'd taken it off when Esther had laughed.

"Yeah," Esther admits. She does look awfully pretty in the photos, and some of the men in her workshop had come up to tell her so. It had startled her pretty badly, not being used to the attention. "But who's this Peggy Carter dame?"

Her interview with LIFE magazine had come out earlier in the week, long enough that Esther's got the whole article memorized, word for word. They'd given her two pages of pictures and nearly the same amount of print, which had been thrilling, but the article itself is a minefield of nicknames and mysterious brunettes. Bucky hasn't mentioned anyone named Peggy Carter, but he hasn't mentioned any names at all, besides Howard Stark, in his very first letter. And Steve, of course.

"Essie," Esther says, in disgust, just at the thought of it.

Rebecca only laughs, and flips back to the article. The magazine droops over her hands, and Esther's own face beams out at her. _"You may as well be a million miles away from the excess of New York City and its Manhattan night clubs,"_ she reads, and raises an eyebrow at Esther. _"The glittering lights of Times Square do not shine here, nor could they outshine the honest, hard work being done to win the war. Here is where Captain Steven Rogers, better known as Captain America, was born and raised - in a humble neighborhood just a stone's throw away from the bustling Brooklyn Navy Yard."_

_"Stop,"_ Esther groans. Two whole pages full of nonsense like _Essie Barnes, 19, is one of millions of American women who joined the war effort in 1942, here at the Yard. "I just knew I had to do my part," she says, with a winning, honest smile. She is also the youngest sister of none other than Sergeant James "Bucky" Barnes, Captain America's right hand man and leader of the infamous Howling Commandos. The resemblance between brother and sister is remarkable, especially in their striking, almost icy blue eyes._

Or _Although famously shy before he was transformed into the first of America's super soldiers, Captain Rogers has recently been linked to a Miss Peggy Carter, the Army's liaison to the Howling Commandos. Maybe we'll be hearing wedding bells, once the war has ended?_

"I think it's charming," Rebecca says. "And Mother loved it. You made poor Steve sound so sweet. I barely would have recognized him."

"Steve is sweet," Esther says. "Well, all right, but he's sweet to us, at least. I don't think the country wants to know about what a schmuck Captain America can be - they wanna hear the nice stuff."

"Remember Steve's birthday, when he and Bucky got so drunk Steve fell _up_ our back stairs and split his chin open?" Rebecca says, smiling. The rest of the family had come home from watching the fireworks on the river to find the pair of them down in the kitchen, covered in blood and laughing hysterically at each other. 

"Can you imagine telling LIFE Magazine about that?" Esther says, with a laugh.

"I can't imagine telling LIFE Magazine anything," Rebecca says, and shrugs. 

"Maybe they'll do an article about you too," Esther says. She feels vaguely like she's objecting to something - the casual tone in Rebecca's voice, the eyebrow that she lifts in Esther's direction.

"Sure," Rebecca says, laying the magazine aside. "Housewife Sits At Home Alone All Day With Infant, Is Useless. Very stirring. I think our only homefront celebrity will be you, Essie."

"I'm tired of myself," Esther grumbles. She reaches for the magazine and flips through it, idly. Aerial shots of soldiers and tanks, a burned out barn in France, a pile of dead Germans in a field. The war marches on and on. Casualties in France lower than expected - only 3,283 American boys so far who won't be coming home to their families. Charming. Oh look, here are where people are dying in Burma and Italy. Lovely.

She pushes it away and puts her face down into the blanket, breathing in the smell of mothballs and grass. She shifts her head a little to find Leba staring her straight in the face, rapt. 

"Have you noticed Bucky never says anything about what they're doing? What their missions are like over there?" Esther asks. She rolls onto her back and stares up at the leaves overhead, the sunlight sifting through them. A tiny hand finds its way into her hair and grips, but not hard enough to hurt. 

"Glub," says Leba. "Glbth."

"Rubba dub dub," Esther replies, and lifts the baby overhead, bouncing her easily into the air. "Three men in a tub!" Leba shrieks with joy, her tiny hands balling up into fists. Esther risks bouncing her a little higher - Leba's gotten bigger but Esther is strong now, after almost two years at the Yard - and each moment of weightless, breathless flight makes them both giggle harder and harder.

"Maybe they can't," Rebecca says, unconcerned. "Maybe it's classified. Bucky's first letters were half scratched out, remember?"

"But we read it in the papers though, don't we?" Esther says to Leba, with an exaggerated frown on her face. Leba pokes two chubby fingers in her nose and commands, "Uh!" 

There've been lots of news about Captain America, although no more films, which Esther has been terribly disappointed by. They hear a lot about what Captain America is doing, albeit a little sporadically: a month of nothing, then two HYDRA strongholds destroyed somewhere - and Allied forces able to advance, bringing the end of the war that much closer! Captain America, bringing hope to the troops in Rome and in Normandy, and the back ends of nowhere that nobody cares about!

Esther's started a scrapbook for Bucky, even though the articles usually only mention Steve by name. She's put in all of the Captain America posters she can find, even the VD one that she had to ask her cousin Jacob to steal from his clinic for her.

"Maybe we wouldn't want to know what they're doing," Rebecca says. "Maybe it's dangerous and they don't want us to worry. Maybe they're -" 

Rebecca falls silent, abruptly. When Esther looks over - the baby clasped against her chest, wiggling grumpily now that it's clear flying time is over - she's back to reading Bucky's second letter. "So why's Bucky writing a letter just to you?" Esther asks, trying to sound casual. 

Rebecca's eyes flick up. Her shoulders are a bowed line underneath her prim, long sleeved shirt. She's covered up neck to ankles, despite the warmth of the day; only her wrists poke through, like chicken bones. Esther combs her fingers through Leba's hair and tries not to show her impatience. 

"I asked Bucky for some advice," Rebecca says, looking back back down at the letter. It's only a single sheet, compared to the four pages the rest of them received. 

"So what's it say?" Esther asks, unable to help herself. Rebecca exhales, the corner of her mouth wavering, like it can't decide whether to turn up or down.

"Esther Shoshana Barnes!" she thunders, abruptly, and Esther jumps and almost drops the baby right off into the grass. “You get your nose out of your sister’s business right this instant!”

Esther pushes upright, Leba cradled carefully against her body, and gapes wordlessly at her sister. "I wasn't - !" she says, but Rebecca just laughs.

"No, that's what he wrote," she says. "Here, you can see."

"What a jerk," Esther says faintly, and exchanges Leba for the sheet of paper. 

There's not much. The page is mostly blank, besides the big line of capital letters addressed to Esther up at the top - the rest of it set tight in the middle of the page, hidden until the sheet is unfolded.  
  
  
  
_ESTHER SHOSHANA BARNES! YOU GET YOUR NOSE OUT OF YOUR SISTER'S BUSINESS RIGHT THIS INSTANT! If she wants you to read this she'll tell you so!_  
  
_Becca, I thought long and hard about what to write to you, and this is what I came up with._

_I'm sorry I'm not there to hold your hand. I'm sorry I'm not there to see all this for myself. I'm sorry I wasn't there to listen, when you might've picked different if you knew you could._

_Not everyone in the world gets to be happy. But you should be. No matter what anyone else thinks or how it's gotta happen, I want you to be happy. That's all we got in life, however long it lasts. You don't have to stay. ___

 

_All my love,_  
_Bucky_  
  
  
  
"What does that mean?" Esther says, looking up. "What'd you ask his advice for?"

Rebecca's got Leba up on her feet, holding onto both of her hands as she wiggles up and down, stamping her little feet eagerly. She's not looking back at the baby, though - her mouth is a tense line, and she's watching Esther closely.

"Aren't you happy?" Esther asks, when she doesn't say anything.

After a moment, Rebecca smiles. "I'm all right."

"All right?" Esther echoes. She curls up on her knees to face her sister better, and waits for the rest of it. It's quiet, all around them - just the muted sounds of the gramophone, and of children laughing, soft and quiet on the breeze. This far into the park it's like you've left the city entirely - like there's not a war going on at all.

"I asked Bucky -" Rebecca sighs. "It doesn't matter. I don't even know what I wanted to hear but it wasn't that. Bucky's an idiot, he just doesn't understand."

"But I don't want you to be unhappy either," Esther says. Her hands shift over her knees, tugging tight the fabric of her skirt. 

Rebecca shrugs and starts to gather up the baby's things, the scraps from their picnic lunch, the abandoned wrap for her hair. "Maybe you'll understand when you're older."

"You have to go already?" Esther asks, disappointed. "I thought maybe we could go to the museum. I have all day off."

"Sam wants dinner ready at six," Rebecca says, and they fold the blanket up together. She hefts the baby up on one hip, for better passage down the hill and back to the brick buildings and hustle of Brooklyn.

"Oh," Esther says, and shifts the picnic basket from one hand to the other. "Well, I can walk with -" 

"Bye Essie," Rebecca says, and tweaks the end of her nose. "Biz shpeter."

"Bye," Esther echoes, and then, "Happy birthday!" as Rebecca walks away, down the winding path out of the park. She waits, but Rebecca doesn't turn around.  


  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _2/05/43,_ she reads, _Dear Steve. I did not believe there could be so much sand and dust in the world, and about half of it is in my underwear._

  
  


"And here I thought I'd washed the last of Steve Rogers' dirty drawers," Mother says, sighing.

The apartment is cold, and smells like it hasn't been lived in for a year or more, which is about how long it's been since someone's lived in it. The kitchen is neat as a pin, thank God - Steve hadn't left any dirty dishes in his mad dash out of Brooklyn and into the war - but the bedroom still smells faintly of dirty socks and men.

"I'll wash them," Esther offers, and Mother chuckles.

"Put off having to wash a man's underwear for as long as you can, Esther," she advises, and sets the laundry bag on top of the big box resting on the dresser, already full of Steve and Bucky's belongings. 

They don't talk much, as they move about in the cramped space. Esther's sleepy and aching on one shoulder from her work - her team's been rotated out of the sub-assembly workshop and onto the bones of a new ship. It's the first she's been out on the dry docks themselves; they hadn't let women do the work until a few months ago, and now it feels like they're getting the hardest work assignments. She hasn't slept right for weeks.

The apartment is tiny, only two rooms of about equal size. It has its own toilet tucked into a little closet, but that's about all you can say for it. The rooms are divided up by a thin paned window pretending to be a wall, a curtain hung across it for privacy. The third time Esther and her Mother trip over each other in the cramped space, Mother throws her hands up in frustration and says, "I will never understand why those boys chose to live here instead of being sensible and staying at home!"

"Why didn't they just move up to the top apartment in our home?" Esther asks, shaking the dust off of Bucky's winter coat, squished into almost nothingness at the bottom of the drawer. Mother retreats back into what likes to call itself a kitchen and starts rattling around in there. "At least it has the tub in the washroom where it belongs." 

"That's not an apartment for bachelors," Mother calls back, and sighs. "Although it certainly would have been an improvement over this wretched place. Maybe they can have it, when they come home."

"I don't know the Army's gonna let Steve move back to Brooklyn," Esther says doubtfully. The other bottom drawer yields a number of thin, worn shirts and a stack of sketchbooks - Steve's side of the dresser, then. "He's so famous now. Maybe they'll want him to keep being famous."

A letter slips out from one of the sketchbooks as she hefts the stack into the box, and flutters down to the floor, halfway under the dresser. She crouches a little to retrieve the fallen papers. The sheets are soft and travel worn against her hand, and deeply creased. 

_2/05/43,_ she reads, _Dear Steve. I did not believe there could be so much sand and dust in the world, and about half of it is in my underwear._

Esther smiles, reflexively. The Army had sent Bucky to North Africa at the end of '42, and he'd been back in springtime of '43 with the end of the campaign, full of cheerful complaints about Tunisia and the food they'd been given. She looks over her shoulder, cautiously. It's been ages since they’ve had a letter from Bucky, not since August. She looks for Steve and Bucky in the background of every photo from the front she can find but she’s never spotted them, not even once.

_I'm sorry I haven't written. I wasn't sure what to say to you, and anyway what is there to say? There's sand and dirt and I sleep in a hole in the ground more often than not, and I'm using up all my glad words writing my family. I can't pretend with you and it'd kill me to -_

"I haven't met anything yet that stops Steve from doing whatever he sets a mind to," Mother calls, and Esther flinches, knocking the sketchbook off her knees and onto the floor. She's just managed to stuff the letter back in its sketchbook and the sketchbook into the box when Mother appears in the doorway, her arms full with one of the ancient cast iron pans Steve had rescued from somewhere or other. She's smiling down at Esther, her eyes very pale in the clear light of Steve and Bucky's bedroom. "Of all of my children, you're the only one who can give that boy a run for stubbornness."

"No," Esther objects, a little vaguely - it's not like it's not true. 

Mother frowns at her. "Are you alright, Esther? You look a little flushed."

"Fine," Esther says, and smiles. "Thought I saw a mouse."

Mother tsks and turns back to the other room, her whole body shifted back under the weight of the heavy pan. Esther looks back at the box regretfully, the letter sticking out just a little from the bottom of the sketchbook. Later, maybe. For now -

Esther trails her mother back into the kitchen, curious. "Would you want Steve to come back and live with us again?"

She knows, vaguely, that her mother has not always liked Steve. He'd been a sickly child, a risk in a house with three infants. He'd grown up in unceasing poverty and squalor, although he was usually clean and well mannered enough, and his mother had been a nurse so he wasn't prone to lice or fleas, like so many other tenement children they were warned not to play with. A good boy, to be sure - but more trouble in his little finger than Bucky had in his whole body, prior to meeting Steve. No family to speak of besides his mother (and Esther had heard Things about Steve's father, long dead), just one of the thousands of no account Irish, who'd stumbled into the country a generation after the Barneses, and seemed determined to sink right to the bottom. Sometimes it had seemed like the only thing Steve ever had going for him was that Bucky Barnes loved him.

"Steve's a part of our family," Mother answers absently, herding another one of the heavy cast iron pans into a box. She frowns into the box, her hands on her hips. "He'll want these," she decides, but stands there a moment longer, as if contemplating the effort it will take to move the damn things down four steep flights of stairs.

She looks up at Esther and smiles, brushing her dark hair out her eyes. "Can you imagine, Steve living in California like a movie star?"

It's almost unthinkable. Swimming pools - beautiful women - palm trees. More money than any of them have ever seen. Sunshine all year round. Unbidden, her mind gives her a neat little image of Steve in swimming trunks, with a thin mustache like Errol Flynn or Howard Stark. Peggy Carter lounging by the pool in a lame bathing suit.

"No," Esther says, very seriously, and Mother laughs.

"I can't either," she says, and sighs. "Well, I don't care _what_ they want Captain America to do after the war is over, as long as it's not too far from Brooklyn. All that matters to me is that James stays close to home and for our family to be together again. And that includes Steve, of course - as long as the top apartment isn't a step down for our war heroes!"

Steve had come to live with them after his mother died, like some sort of displaced relative. The funeral had been at that dour little church on Lewis and Willoughby, and at some point during the service Steve had simply vanished. No one had been surprised about it, when a search had proved useless. Bucky had seemed resigned, more than anything else. He'd driven them all home and waited an hour or two for Steve to show, smoking cigarette after cigarette on the front stoop. Eventually he'd walked off up New York Avenue, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his head down. 

The next morning, Steve had simply been at the breakfast table, in some old night clothes of Bucky's. It made sense; he could hardly afford to live by himself in that fire trap tenement in Stuyvesant that Esther had never been allowed to visit (she'd seen the outside and it did certainly look terrible). But she can't remember anyone actually saying: Steve lives with us now.

She'd been 13 when Missus Rogers died, and had been so sad about it that she'd cried for days. Not because she had liked Missus Rogers that much - she had been a terrifying woman with an unintelligible accent, who was even smaller than Steve grew up to be, who liked to drink and smoke cigars, who had been a _Suffragette_ , and who had little interest in children who were not her son - but because Steve changed overnight from her sweet older almost-brother to an adult with real, visible adult cares. 

Steve had been so _sad_ , and made small by his sadness, like he couldn't even stand up properly because the hurt was just that bad. Esther couldn't even _imagine_ being in that much pain all the time, so she'd tried it. She'd pictured her own mother dying. How it might happen - how maybe they'd find out. A car accident, maybe. Or a murderer lurking in a dark alley. Or sickened with pneumonia, or maybe tuberculosis, the way Missus Rogers had gone. And oh, had it hurt, inside and out. Even the thought of their family and the empty space her mother used to be made her want to crawl into bed and never come out.

She goes and embraces her mother. It's stiff, unpracticed - but after a moment they melt a little bit and it's nice, standing over the box of Bucky and Steve's belongings, packing up the mess into something two women could carry between them.

"What's that for?" Mother asks when Esther pulls away, a puzzled little smile on her face.

Esther shrugs, a little awkwardly. "Well, Bucky isn't here to do it," she says. "But someone oughta."

They start packing again in slightly embarrassed silence. Esther can feel Mother looking at her every once in a while, that little smile still on her face. 

Other members of the family will come later on for the furniture worth keeping, or at least worth keeping in the family instead of leaving for Uncle Abraham's next tenants to abuse. They take Steve's kitchen things, and Steve and Bucky's clothing and books, and anything that maybe they'll want when they come home from the war. It all fits into the back seat of their beat up Ford, with room left over to peer out the back window. As they drive off, Mother offers a salute to the Captain America poster up in the window of the sandwich shop across the road, thanking them for buying war bonds. 

 

  


-

  


 

It's cold outside, but the air feels good on her flushed face. The yard feels blessedly empty - the garden shriveled and bare, the chicken and rabbit coops shut up tight against the winter. Warm light spills from the second floor windows, flickering as people move in front of the lamps, crossing back and forth. Cleaning up now from their Christmas dinner, a week ahead of schedule.

Esther lets herself into the coop with the chickens and wiggles the door closed behind her. It's dry inside, and warm, and the chickens make soft, soothing sounds at her. She'd come out for a cigarette, but all she'd really wanted was a moment of aloneness, away from - from everything. From Sam and Rebecca, and Earl the photographer from LIFE Magazine, and her mother, and the leftovers of the feast LIFE had cooked, and the Christmas tree that was everything she’d ever dreamed of as a child, but has only made her sneeze.

There’d never even been a Christmas tree at the Barnes home before. When Esther was young it had been too much of an expense and by the time she’d grown no one else seemed to miss it. But Mr Bird had come calling and said he’d take care of everything - that it would be an honor for the SSR and LIFE Magazine to see to the Barnes' needs at Christmas. There was no need for the family to endure any more sacrifice, he'd said, holding her mother's hands in both of his own.

And it had been lovely. A Christmas celebration like out of the pictures. At least at first.

_God_ , she missed Bucky so much sometimes. No matter how big she ever got he was always so much bigger, tall enough to wrap his arms around her shoulders and squeeze all the worry from her. 

The pictures would be beautiful, at least. Esther, holding Leah up to the tree, helping her to place a bit of tinsel on a branch, laughing at her delight. Father, opening gifts for Captain America and his Howling Commandos, sent to LIFE by their adoring public. The Christmas feast - more food than she’d ever seen on their table, mashed potatoes and jellied sauce and an enormous roast ham, dishes Esther had never even heard of - more food than they'd even be able to save and eat later.

The back door scrapes open and closed, and two sets of feet move down the stairs. Esther stills. She unwinds her arms from around herself and draws further into the coop, on light footsteps. One of the hens raises her head and blinks at her sleepily. She draws a hand over the feathery back absently, listening. Let it be the soldiers from the SSR. Let it be Earl and his assistant.

The click of a cigarette lighter. The smell of smoke, faint over the earthy stink of the chickens. And Rebecca's voice: "Don't. Whatever you're going to say, just - don't. Please."

Someone exhales heavily, and Esther feels cold, heavy dread like a stone on her neck, dragging her down with its weight. No more fighting. She can't listen to any more fighting.

But it's only her father, lighting his own cigarette. "Your mother's worried about you," he says, so close to the wall of the coop that Esther nearly jumps out of her skin. " _I'm_ worried about you."

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Rebecca says, brisk. 

“Then what the _hell_ was that, in there?”

"He's not wrong," Rebecca says, defensive even though inside she'd only sat and stared at her hands. "This is _ridiculous_. They're making fun of our whole family. Did you see that photographer laugh, when Mother asked if we would sing during dinner?"

"That's no excuse," Father returns in an angry hiss, "to behave so disrespectfully in _my_ house, as a _guest_ of our -"

He stops abruptly, exhaling hard through his nose. His shoes scrape over the bricks, back and forth. Esther puts her hands over her ears, but it doesn't block out any of the sound. Rebecca is still and silent, only a ghost from inside the walls of Esther's hiding spot.

"This isn't -" Father says. "Rebecca, my girl - this is not why I came out here."

"But they want to erase us," Rebecca says. "They want to turn us into goyishe, for the cameras. For _Captain America_. You'd let them do that to us?"

"It's not up to me," Father says. His shoes stop scraping, and the wall of the coop creaks as he slowly, gently leans into it, blocking out the light. "Your mother knows what she's doing. If she wants them in our house, then you have to respect it."

Rebecca scoffs. Esther wants to sink right through the worn floor of the coop, straight through the center of the Earth and out the other side into heathen China. The air is thick with cigarette smoke, with the smell of the chickens. 

She's expecting Rebecca to get whipped - some dim, childish expectation, as if Rebecca isn't a grown woman with her own children, as if they aren't all grown, even Frank off in the Pacific killing Japs like a real soldier. But Father doesn't move. He smokes his cigarette. He and Rebecca smoke and stare at each other, and the silence stretches on and on until Esther thinks she'll be the one who breaks from it. It'd surely be better to be caught eavesdropping than to have to listen to one more slow silent inhale, one more sharp silent exhale.

"What happened to my sweet girl, Becca?" Father asks. His voice is soft, bled dry of anger. "What happened to turn my bold, brave girl into this? This girl who looks down her nose at her own family? Who _lies_ to us? Who lets a man tell her what she's allowed to eat? Who thinks we wouldn't notice and be scared for her?"

"Stop," Rebecca says, low. Esther moves forward gingerly, pressing an eye up against a crack in between thin boards of the coop wall. Her family's hardly more than outlines, shadowed against the light streaming down from the house. Father takes a step forward, and then another. Rebecca takes a step back for each.

"Tate - stop," Rebecca says. "The ham would have made me sick. I've been sick a lot lately."

“Sick of _what_?" Father asks, so low it's almost a growl. 

"I'm pregnant," Rebecca says, and Esther claps both hands over her mouth, trying not to make a sound. Father is abruptly silent. "You're getting another grandchild. I'm sorry - I wanted to say something during dinner, but Sam wouldn't - I thought maybe it could make us happy again. No one should fight on Christmas. I wanted to make a - a happy announcement."

"Becca," Father says, and makes a noise in his throat like he's choking. 

"Aren't you happy?" Rebecca asks, small. 

Esther leans forward, turning her face from side to side, trying to see. She waits for Father to step forward and take Rebecca into his arms, to reassure her how happy they all are, to make everything better. Maybe, given another moment, he would have.

Instead, the back door creaks open. The light shifts inside the coop. "Rebecca," Sam says, from the top of the stairs. "We're going."

Rebecca obeys without a word, without looking back at Father, who stands there for a long moment, his breath harsh sounding in the cold air. Eventually he stubs his cigarette out on the wall of the coop and climbs the steps, heading back inside. The back light clicks off, and Esther is left alone in the dark.

 

  


\- 

  


_  
_

_12/29/44_

 

_Dear family,_

 

_You wouldn't believe how cold it is here. Once again I can't tell you where "here" is, which I am sure you are used to by now._

_I thought I knew cold in Brooklyn but this is something else. It hurts like hardly anything I've ever felt, and eats away at every part of you until you can't think, can hardly breathe. The only important thing is getting warm. I swear I'm up half the night making sure I got all my toes because I sure as hell can't feel them._

_We were caught for two days in a little village, waiting for a storm to pass. The good news is that the other guys were also caught in the storm, and we also caught several ███████ who were hiding █████████████████████ and didn't expect their cover to last. Steve did a nice job making it look pretty instead of miserable, and I hope you enjoy the drawings. It almost makes me miss Brooklyn in February. At least here I will never fall down icy subway steps and split my pants."_

_I am trying to make jokes, but I can't. I just can't. It's taken me three days to write this letter because I can't find anything in me that will make you feel good. My head is empty and everything hurts._

_I want to come home. I wish I'd never stayed. The longer I'm away the more I feel like I made up my whole life and it's never been anything but war. Steve and I sit and tell the guys stories about Brooklyn and home and it's the only thing I have to hold on to, that someone else knows it was real. But then I look over and he's a hundred feet tall and last week he took a █████████████████████ and █████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████ and maybe he's not either, but he's still all I got to hold on to right now so that's what I'm gonna do._

_Please don't worry I will be okay._

 

_All my love,_

_Bucky_

 

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You'd think they'd quit making us work on a Saturday," Bethany says, after a while, and Esther hums in agreement. The papers are full of excited talk about a turning point in the European theater: Allied forces streaming across the Rhine, closing in on Berlin. In the eastern front, Tokyo has been firebombed again, and our boys hop ever closer to the Japanese mainland. All week it's felt like all of Brooklyn's holding their breath, the girls in her workshop tense and expectant, every glance and exhale a _when_ , a _soon_ , a _now_. But the only thing anyone says are things like, "you'd think they'd cut the early shift back." At home they haven't talked about it at all.

  
  
  
"This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year, here; next year in Israel. This year we are slaves, next year we will be free people."

"You ready, Leba?" Esther whispers. In her arms, Leba quivers with excitement. "Come on, we can say it together."

"Mah nishtanah!" Leba shouts, right on time, and everyone around the table smiles and laughs. 

"Keep going!" Esther encourages, and they say the rest together: _Mah nishtanah ha-laila hazeh mikol halailos?_

When Esther was young, there was a joke from year to year about the four children in the Haggadah, about which of them was which. She doesn't remember when it stopped - probably when she refused a bat mitzvah, or when the joke grew too sharp, when wicked could mean something other than who had been naughty and broken something lately. 

She remembers being the foolish child, mostly - being praised for her joy and innocence. Bucky was almost always the wise child, by virtue of being so much older than the rest of them, and pliant and obedient in most aspects not related to Steve Rogers. Rebecca had been wicked as a child and foolish as an adult, when Frank grew too cynical to be the one who does not ask.

This year, Leba plays all the children, and asks all the questions, as best she can. Earlier in the day Esther had led her on a hide and seek for chametz, which had then been sold to Father for the queenly sum of three pennies and a toffee candy. It had been Esther's suggestion - a dim remembrance from the games they played as children, Bucky and Mother conspiring to get the younger children engaged in the process of cleaning the house, in sitting still and hungry for hours, singing and praying in a language none of them know. 

"I've never seen you so excited about Pesach," Mother says quietly, and smiles when Esther blushes. 

"Well, Leba was only a baby last year," she says, a little awkward, "she doesn't know the story yet, it's all new for her."

Uncle Abraham catches Esther's eye and drops her a wink. His hands are spread wide, the broken matzah uncovered in front of him. He barely glances down at the text in front of him, the words rolling strong and confident, easy as song. 

"I passed over you and saw you wallowing in your bloods, and I said to you `By your blood you shall live,' and I said to you `By your blood you shall live!' I caused you to thrive like the plants of the field, and you increased and grew and became very beautiful - your bosom fashioned and your hair grown long, but you were naked and bare.”

Father’s drifting a little, in his chair - nodding his head like he’s listening to music instead of prayer. If he’s ever learned a word of Hebrew, Esther's never heard him speak it, but every year he sits at the table with everyone else until it's time to eat, holding Mother's hand under the table.

"The Egyptians treated us badly and made us suffer," Mother says, her voice soft and sweet. "And they put hard work upon us, as it is said: ‘The Egyptians made the children of Israel work with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard work, with mortar and with bricks and all manner of service in the field, all their work which they made them work with rigor." And we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our suffering, our labor and our oppression. 

"During that long period, the king of Egypt died; and the children of Israel groaned because of the servitude, and they cried out. And their cry for help from their servitude rose up to God." 

When it’s Esther’s turn she tries to make her part as exciting as Uncle Abraham makes his, like she’s narrating a movie, like she can do the story justice even in English. "Has any God ever tried to take for himself a nation from the midst of another nation?" she asks, theatrical - "With trials, signs and wonders - with war and with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great miracles, like all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt?"

She shakes Leba's shoulders, for emphasis, and is rewarded with a gasp and a peal of giggles. "Take into your hand this staff!" she commands, "And I will show wonders in heaven and earth!"

The wine sits warm in her stomach. Leba's a comfortable weight on her lap, her tiny fingers moving little crumbs of matzah around the table in front of them, her eyes fixed and fascinated on the storytelling as it winds its way through plagues and darkness and blood on the door. She's always liked the story, even if the telling of it had dimmed throughout the years, even if their table feels more empty than not, their voices worn thin from telling more than what would've been their share, in other years.

She crumbles a bit of the egg into her hand, and dips it into the little bowl of salt water before her. "There," Uncle Abraham says, in satisfaction, as they all eat. "We've escaped Egypt." He looks up at the rest of them and smiles. 

Everyone digs into the meal, gratefully. There's a long silence, broken only by the click of silverware on their plates. The feast is smaller than usual, as are those gathered for the meal: only Esther and Leba, Uncle Abraham, Father, Mother and Esther's grandmother - and Leba only by virtue of weeks of Esther gently coaxing Rebecca to let her come to the Barnes' Seder.

"Any news of our boys?" Uncle Abraham asks, wiping a bit of soup out of his beard, and Mother shakes her head.

“Nothing new,” she says, and Esther looks up from assembling Leba’s plate to say, “they were in the paper last week. They liberated a HYDRA prison camp.”

“Where was it?” Uncle Abraham asks, but Esther doesn’t know. He shakes his head, sorrowful. “Too bad they aren't in Poland. They could find where the Nazis have put our people. Maybe there will still be some of us left to save, if they’re quick about it.” 

A few weeks ago, they’d heard a strange rumor of a camp liberated by the Russians, just a whisper from one of Uncle Abraham’s colleagues, whose family had escaped to Switzerland in 1942. Hundreds of Jews hastily abandoned as the Soviet Army advanced; maybe thousands more marched off to places yet unknown. No one's been sure what to think, and they’ve seen nothing in the papers about any of it, not even in the Yiddish ones from the neighborhood. 

Uncle Abraham catches the little frown on Mother's face and shrugs, something wordless passing between the two of them. There've been so many strange rumors, the last few years. It's Abe who drops his eyes first, and then reaches over and tickles Leba's chin. "Don't you worry about that," he tells her. "We're magic people. We endure with miracles."

“I was stopped on the street the other day by a woman,” Mother says, and takes a sip of wine. “I’d gone in to the city to meet Tehillah for lunch - you remember Tehillah, she married the butcher on Nostrand Avenue. This woman - absolutely _covered_ in furs and diamonds - she must have recognized me from that silly magazine. She told me that Steve saved her son's life. He'd been a prisoner at the same factory where James was held. She wanted to tell me thank you, as if I’d had anything to do with it."

"Open up," Esther whispers, and Leba gamely accepts a mouthful of stewed cabbage, only pulling a little face about it.

“She told me she felt safer knowing that America has men like my son and his Commandos," Mother says, and laughs. "I was so startled, I hardly knew what what to think." 

"Vu iz mami?" Leba asks, tilting her face up to Esther's, accepting another bite of food.

Esther sighs, and considers. "Kheyding," she says, finally.

“I see children all the time, playing in the streets with - trash lids or wood, painted like that shield Steve carries around,” Father says. “Playing Captain America. What a strange world we live in, these days. I could never have imagined any of it."

“I don’t mind,” Mother says. “I think it's lovely." 

Esther's not quite listening, most of her attention on cajoling Leba into a bite of potatoes, but she glances up in time to see her parents take each other's hand. "I don't mind," Mother says again, and smiles up like there's only the two of them, in all the world.

"I know," Father says, and brushes a kiss over the back of her hand. Esther looks away, and doesn't watch them lean in together, Mother's free hand coming up to smooth her fingers over Father's hair.

"The whole world knows who James is," Mother says, quiet enough that it's meant for her husband only, and Esther keeps her attention on Leba and her own meal. "They’ll keep him safe for me."

It's late by the time they finish, her mother drowsing gently over her hands, Uncle Abraham hoarse, her grandmother nearly asleep in the front room. Without discussion, Father gets on his coat and helps his mother-in-law to her feet, gets her ready to be driven home. At the door, Uncle Abraham kisses Esther's cheek. "Next year, Jerusalem," he tells her.

"I'm worn straight through," Mother says, when everyone has departed and the house is still and quiet again. 

Esther leans into her, briefly. "Go to bed," she says, and stays still as Mother hugs her, a weary little smile on her face. "I'll clean up."

She clears the table and sets everything to soak downstairs, to be cleaned properly in the morning. Leba follows her upstairs and down, her feet only just beginning to drag now that the party has died down. When the second floor is tidy enough the two of them settle down in front of the fire, Leba dozing off almost immediately, Esther sitting on the floor next to her, the last of the wine in her glass. She should get up and put Leba to bed. She should go to sleep herself. 

She sits and listens to the fire instead, breathing slow and deep, and thinks about miracles.

There's a knock on the door. Leba shifts, sleepily. "Who on earth?" Esther mutters, and grumbles to her feet. "Do you think it's the prophet, baby? Well, we're not afraid." 

It's Rebecca, standing still and frozen on the top step. She smiles when she sees Esther, who can't help smiling back. 

"Everyone's gone home," Esther says, uncertain, and motions her sister across the threshold. "What are you doing here? You hungry? We still got some -" 

"Where are -" Rebecca asks, and then stops. Esther turns and looks at her.

"They went to bed," she says. "Are you alright?"

Rebecca nods, jerkily. She follows Esther into the front room, and makes a beeline for Leba, who doesn't even stir as Rebecca hefts her into her arms. "I thought," she says, and stops. "I needed a walk. I thought I'd come get Leah - she wakes up so early, I don't want her to be a bother."

"She couldn't be," Esther says, and reaches out to smooth Leba's curls, crushed up against her mother's shoulder. They pitch their voices low, even though their parents are tucked away upstairs, and nothing short of a herd of elephants will wake Leba. It's quiet outside, the rest of the neighborhood sleeping off their long celebration, even the buzz of the trackless trolley gone silent. There's only the crackle of the fire to keep them company. 

"We missed you tonight," Esther tells her, and moves her hand to wrap around Rebecca's thin wrist, resting gently across Leba's back. "It's not the same when I'm the only kid here."

"I miss you too," Rebecca whispers. 

The baby carriage is tucked under the stairwell, and together they fetch it and tuck Leba in with her blankets. The floorboards creak under their feet, and Esther stubs her toe on the edge of a nail, trying to move to a quieter spot. "Damn thing's been trying to come up out of the floor all year," Esther grumbles, and Rebecca stifles a laugh. 

"You look pretty tonight," she tells Esther, who says a soft _thank you_ towards the floor. She saw Rebecca only this morning, picking up Leba to bring her to her grandparents' home, but before that it had been weeks. She doesn't know how long it's been since Rebecca has seen their parents. She doesn't know what to say. Her sister is thin and stretched looking, her skin blotchy. She'd been covered in blemishes early in her first pregnancy too, but she'd just laughed about it. They'd laughed about it together.

"How was your dinner?" Esther asks, and Rebecca lifts one shoulder, tugs the blanket up to Leba's chin.

"Long," she says softly, and smiles, faintly. "Much longer without Uncle Abraham cracking jokes."

"The Taubs don't joke much," Esther says - and tries to make it a question, but she already knows the answer. Rebecca just shakes her head, her smile vanishing.

The silence between them drags. Esther's warm and sleepy from the wine and the drone of hours of praying and singing. She could have gone to bed hours ago, and the words just don't come.

Rebecca sighs, and does up the sash on her heavy coat. She's hardly showing yet - just the faintest curve high on her belly. In her carriage, Leba is deeply asleep - her little mouth slack, her tiny fingers curled on the pillow. Rebecca smiles down at her daughter, and puts both hands on the carriage.

Instead of taking the other side to help them down the front stairs, Esther blurts out, "Why don't you stay?"

Rebecca frowns at her. "Esther, I need to get home. Sam will -" 

"Come on," Esther says, and tries to smile, tries to make it look big and easy, like it doesn't matter. "We can put Leba in the middle room and you can sleep in my bed, with me. We can stay up and tell stories, like when we were kids. It'll be fun."

Rebecca stares, her eyes wide and blank, down into the baby carriage. In the dim light of the hall they look nearly black. "Sam wants me home," she says, finally, and Esther says, "So what? We want you home too."

Rebecca's eyes flick up, and her mouth shifts. She doesn't say anything, so Esther presses closer. "Just for tonight," she says, and smiles. "It's cold out, you shouldn't be walking around in just that little jacket. You'll catch your death. And you know how dangerous it is. Why, a whole gang of men beat and robbed a woman on our corner, only just last week."

Rebecca laughs, just the barest huff of air, like she can't help herself. She lets Esther put an arm around her waist, even if her own hands are still wrapped stiff around the handle of the carriage. "Just for tonight," she repeats, cautious, questioning.

"Sure," Esther answers, and smiles, wide and warm. "Sure, just tonight."  


  


-

Esther wakes before her alarm starts to ring. The windows are cracked a little and she watches the curtains swing in the breeze for a few minutes before sliding out of bed and shrugging on her work clothes. It's stuffy in the middle room as she creeps through it, stepping carefully over any creaky spots to avoid waking Rebecca and Leba. Leba is a good sleeper these days, but Rebecca is restless and aching, and spends nights rattling around the house, unable to sleep. She looks peaceful enough this morning, if a little sweaty - her hair stuck to her damp forehead, one arm curled towards her daughter and the other across her belly. Esther leaves both doors open behind her, to catch a cross breeze for them.

Father's in the kitchen, sitting blearily over the yesterday's newspaper and the crumbly remains of his breakfast. He gets up to kiss her on the forehead, and fix coffee for both of them as she fries an egg for herself. They sit in companionable silence as she eats and Father slowly, wearily trudges towards full consciousness. 

He gives her a ride over to the Yard, when it's time for each of them to head to work. On days where their schedules don't match up, she hauls Bucky's old beast of a bicycle up Atlantic Avenue to Bedford and finally over onto Flushing, a process that takes more than twice as long as by car, but is still quicker than navigating the street trolleys. 

The streets are quiet, in the scant hours between morning deliveries and the commuter rush into the city. On the bench beside her, her father is relaxed, a little smile playing around under his mustache. It makes her smile to see it, and as they turn onto Flushing she leans in against him, accepts an absent minded squeeze around her shoulders. 

"Love you, Tate," she says as they pull up in front of the Yard.

"Love you, Esther," he answers, his broad smile finally looking bright and alert. "Rebecca's cooking dinner tonight, so be home early, all right?"

"All right," she answers, and swings down to the pavement. She can hear him whistling, as he drives off to his little office down on the waterfront, ready to start his own day. 

She spots Bethany smoking a cigarette out near the hammerhead crane, placidly watching it swing a steel keel towards the shipways, high up over their heads. She nods in greeting, and they stand together as Esther smokes her own cigarette, her shoulders easy under the weight of the sun.

"You'd think they'd quit making us work on a Saturday," Bethany says, after a while, and Esther hums in agreement. The papers are full of excited talk about a turning point in the European theater: Allied forces streaming across the Rhine, closing in on Berlin. In the eastern front, Tokyo has been firebombed again, and our boys hop ever closer to the Japanese mainland. All week it's felt like all of Brooklyn's holding their breath, the girls in her workshop tense and expectant, every glance and exhale a _when_ , a _soon_ , a _now_. But the only thing anyone says are things like, "you'd think they'd cut the early shift back." At home they haven't talked about it at all.

They're inside today, and the workshop feels cold and dim after the bright May sunshine. They fall into an easy rhythm, Esther on one side of the steel with her pockets full of rivets, Bethany braced on the other side with the bucker, the buzz of the rivet gun loud and echoed all around them as the other teams get to work too. She can feel Ruthie Taub's eyes hot on the back of her neck from three aisles over, but like other every morning since Becca came home and stayed, Ruthie Taub keeps her opinions to herself. 

She's not thinking about anything in particular, the whole of her attention focused on the task at hand and the steadiness of her breath (when, she inhales; _soon_ , she exhales), so she doesn't pay much attention to the commotion, at first. She barely hears the grating hum of the other teams fall silent one by one, and it's not until girls start abandoning their stations and hurrying past them out towards the doors that she looks up, shoves the goggles up off her face, and notices that everyone is looking at her. 

She peers around the steel at Bethany, and they frown at each other, confused. Two of the girls have started crying, and little knots of comfort have formed around them, broken off from the group massed at the workshop doorways. She can't see what everyone's looking at. She can’t hear what they’re saying. She straightens, and hops down off her station, pausing long enough to give Bethany a hand down as well. Everyone is looking at her.

Everyone is looking at her, but no one says anything as she and Bethany approach. Outside the workshop they can hear people shouting. A man runs by the open doorway clutching a newspaper, just a flash of motion in the bright sunlight.

"What happened?" she says, but no one says anything. She knows the girls who are crying - they're both from the neighborhood, a few years older than her. One of them is clutching at her chest, hardly visible under the layer of arms wrapped around her, her shirt distended where she's grabbing at one of her pins. 

"Captain America's dead!" someone shouts, outside in the sunlight, and the girls around her flinch. 

"No," Esther says, the word slipping out of her numb lips. "No, but -"

Like magic there's a copy of the _Eagle_ in her hand, and there it says, right up on top: _Captain Rogers Disappears Over Atlantic._

She stares at it. The article's most of the front page. She catches words at random: _bombs, experimental plane, New York City, HYDRA, abruptly silent._

She hands the paper back into the crowd, at random. Her whole body feels cold and strange. She's so angry she could spit. She’s so angry she feels like she’ll choke on it. It bubbles up into her throat and makes it impossible to speak for long seconds, long enough that Bethany goes to take her shoulder, and for Esther to shake her off.

"That's _cruel,_ " she says, and stomps a foot at the injustice of it, the _meanness_. "And it's _stupid_. That's a stupid, cruel trick and I don't appreciate it."

She turns on one heel and takes two steps back towards her station. She can barely hear the buzz of their whispering over her own red anger. She whirls back to face them, and takes another step backwards when all she sees are huge, shocked eyes, instead of the poorly concealed laughter she was expecting.

"Esther," Bethany says, and it's echoed throughout the group, because they all know her, they all know who her family is. Some of them, she'd even told some of them about the telegrams, about the scare they had. So they should know. They should _know_.

She looks at Bethany, and at the other girls, and feels ashamed for getting angry. It's not their joke. So it's not their fault they didn't know any better. "It's a trick," she tells them, and takes the paper back, holding it up so everyone can see. There's Steve in his dress uniform, right there on the front page, looking handsome and strong and undefeatable. 

"The war's over," she tells them. "It's all over, practically, and we won. So this must be a trick, to fool the Germans - maybe there's still some Nazis trying to put up a fight, even though all the other ones surrendered. So the Howling Commandos need to flush 'em out. It's just a trick, and you oughta be ashamed of yourself for believing it. Steve's not dead." 

She turns the paper over, looks at the front page again. Steve stares back, smiling. Her breath comes short in her throat, her heart beating hard enough to hurt, her hand shaking where it's clutched around the paper.

"Just look at this," she tells them, and turns the paper back over and shakes it in their faces. "It's stupid. Steve can't be dead. He and Bucky look after each other, Bucky wouldn't let anything happen to Steve. But this paper - it don’t say anything about him. So you tell me - where's my brother, huh? Where's Bucky Barnes?"  


  


-

  
_3/19/45_

_Dear Family,_

_I'm very sorry if I worried you with my last letter. I tried to get the letter back after it had been sent out but it was too late. I guess it's no surprise that sometimes guys crack up for a little while here, but I'm sorry you had to see that it happens to me too. But I'm okay. I talked to Steve and he got me through it, same as he's always done._

_We've been real busy here, so I haven't had a chance to write. After we left ██████ most everyone else picked up and headed towards Berlin and the brass is pretty hopeful, or so I'm told. Some of them think it might actually be over soon - the whole thing. All around us, the enemy is throwing up their hands and surrendering. We are on the hunt for one last rat and then I think over to ██████ directly to help with mopping up or maybe just to parade Steve around like a living victory flag._

_This rat has been very hard to track but ██████████████████ and actually it's not as bad here, and at least it's very beautiful. Our first camp was in a castle! It was two weeks ago so hopefully the censor will let that little bit through. If not I will tell you later how beautiful it was, and fit for a princess like my little Leba to sleep in. That has been the highlight - otherwise it has been snow, more snow, and two of us getting sick (I won't name names) from being too high up in the mountains._

_Maybe it really will be over soon. I can barely imagine. I can barely remember being anything else besides a soldier, sometimes. But God willing I will be home soon. Until then,_

_All my love,_

_Bucky_  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not ready, when the doorbell rings. It's 3pm on the dot - the little clock in the front room had just chimed the hour, and the sound of it hasn't even faded away. She's precisely on time, but they're not ready.

  
  
They're not ready, when the doorbell rings. It's 3pm on the dot - the little clock in the front room had just chimed the hour, and the sound of it hasn't even faded away. She's precisely on time, but they're not ready.

It's Esther who moves to answer, after smoothing her hands down the front of her dress and taking one last look around the house, which is spotlessly clean. The floorboards in the hall gleam, newly oiled. You could eat off the rug in the front room. The front door swings open easily, silently, and brings with it a cool gust of air from the street and the sight of their guest standing two steps down the front stairs, like she'd turned to run and, instead, was transfixed by the sight of their front window.

"Hello," Esther ventures, a little tentatively - soft, like she’ll startle. "You must be Peggy Carter."

Peggy does startle, just a little - dragging her attention back to Esther's face. She's as beautiful in person as Esther thought she'd be: her dark hair neatly curled, her lipstick perfect. "Hello, yes," she says, and her voice is richly toned, and perfectly calm sounding. "You must be Esther. Thank you so much for seeing me."

"Come in," Esther says, and Peggy does, her heels ticking lightly on the stone. Esther swings the door shut behind her, and with the click of the latch goes the noise from the street as well. The air in the house settles close around them, and Esther wishes she'd thought to open one of the back windows. 

Father and Rebecca are waiting in the front room, already standing. Everyone shakes hands like they’re facing a firing squad. There’s a teapot sitting ready on the table, still hot - they’d gone special to the grocer on the advice of Mrs. Oppenheimer down the street, whose son came back three months ago from England - and Peggy accepts a cup gracefully, although no one drinks.

"You've a lovely home," Peggy says, after a moment of tense, strained silence.

"Thank you," Esther says, and Peggy smiles at her gratefully, for the nicety. "Did you have any trouble finding it?"

"No no," Peggy says. "Your directions were quite thorough. And I'd spent some time in New York with the SSR, in '43."

"Are you settling here, permanently?" Esther asks. Peggy, as a guest, had been gestured towards the armchair. Esther, Rebecca and Father clumped together on the couch, facing her. The other chairs, scattered around the room, feel unbearably empty. The impression of a firing squad hasn't quite dissipated.

"It seems so, at least for the time being," Peggy says, and takes a sip of tea. "I've been asked by the SSR to join their Manhattan branch. I've taken a room near the theatre district while I look for more permanent accommodations."

They're interrupted by a howl from upstairs, and Rebecca excuses herself. She gives Esther a look as she rises, with a little shake of her head. Esther gives a nod in return, and Rebecca vanishes upstairs. "My grandson just turned two months old," Father offers, and Peggy smiles politely. "We've named him James."

The smile falters. "Yes, of course," she says, and the silence grows immeasurably more ghastly. They stare at her, waiting. She stares back, her whole body carefully held together, her breathing slow and absolutely silent in the bright, airless room. Upstairs, James is still crying, great gulping sobs growing quieter under the creak of Rebecca's footsteps, pacing back and forth. 

"Your youngest son," Peggy says, a little tentatively. "He served in the Pacific, is that correct?"

"In the Philippines," Esther answers. "He - it was all right for Frank. He came back with a new wife and a bunch of medals on his chest."

"It must be a great comfort to you, that he made it home safely," Peggy says, and Esther breathes out. She and Father don't look at each other.

"Yes," she manages, after a pause. "Well. He's moved to California."

Peggy, blessedly, says nothing, just the slightest lift of her head to show she understands. "I'm sorry my wife isn't able to join us," Father says, a little abruptly. "She's - not well, these days. You understand."

"Of course," Peggy says softly, and then, after a moment, “I - had hoped to have good news for you." 

Father sags back into the couch, one hand coming up to rub at his eyes. Esther takes the other between both of hers. "They didn't find him," Father says, tiredly. 

"The men in Sgt Barnes' company are very experienced trackers," Peggy says. "There were two men in the search party who were also present on the mission where Sgt Barnes was - lost. Unfortunately, a storm hit the area quite hard this week, and they were forced to -"

"You haven't found Steve either," Father says, his hands still over his eyes. 

Peggy flinches, almost imperceptibly. "No," she says. "No, we haven't."

"Will there be another search party, next spring?" Esther asks. 

Even before Peggy shakes her head, they can see the answer in her eyes. "They were in the mountains for three days before the storm, following the route of the train," she says. "If there were any remains to find, they would have been found. I'm afraid there's simply no trace. I'm - I'm so sorry."

She looks away, politely, her hands crossed over her knees, as Father slowly collapses into his chest, and Esther wraps both arms around him. Her posture is perfect. Esther watches from underneath her lashes, her own eyes dry and aching, and sees Peggy's eyes track back to the flag in the front window. From the inside of the house, it's just a rectangle of fabric. It's only from the street that you can see the stars: two gold, one blue.

She'd never seen her father cry growing up, but he's unashamed in it now, tears rolling down his cheeks, his nose red and inflamed. His grip on her wrist is painful, but she stays still and quiet, holding tight. He blows his nose twice, and stuffs the handkerchief back into his pocket, patting her shoulder as she eases back.

When he can speak again, Father's voice is wrecked and raw, painful to hear. "Why were we not told that James had been killed? No one from the SSR contacted us. We found out through the papers about Steve, like anyone else."

"There was - very little time," Peggy says, delicately. She stares at her fingernails instead of meeting their eyes, her shoulders stiff. "Captain Rogers and his team had returned with a - a very valuable prisoner, who lead us to the Valkyrie only just in time to stop Schmidt from carrying out his plan. It all happened very quickly. I'm afraid - I'm afraid it simply did not occur to anyone, to notify you of Sgt. Barnes' death until after -"

"Four days," Father says, cutting her off. " _Four days_. With no word. We read in the papers - Captain America is missing, maybe dead. We go to the SSR over and over - they say, we can't tell you what happened to Steve Rogers, we can't even tell you if your son was with him when he -"

Again. The whole house is quiet, apart from the sobs he muffles into his hand, the groan of the couch as he shudders, his whole body wracked with grief.

Esther speaks into the silence, her hand on her father's shoulders. Her eyes on her grandmother's tea set, still slightly dusty on the undersides of each delicate cup. "We thought Bucky must have been on the plane," she says, and offers Peggy the best smile she can muster. It makes her face ache. "Where else would he have been, except with Steve?"

"Your brother was -" Peggy says, and her eyelashes dust against her cheeks as she looks down into her tea cup, still mostly full. She licks her lips, considering her words. "I didn't know him well. He was a hard man to know, I think. But Captain Rogers - Steve - loved him very much. His sacrifice was not in vain."

Father looks up. He doesn't say anything. Peggy meets his eyes with a look on her face like someone's finally decided to pull the trigger on her. "I apologize," she says, after a moment. "I - perhaps I shouldn't have come. Please - it wasn't my intention to -" The sentence hangs in the air, unfinished, and Peggy drops her gaze. 

"Please accept my deepest condolences," she says, and stands. "I'll see myself out."

Unacceptable, even in the circumstances. Father stays seated on the couch, his elbows braced on his knees, his head hanging heavy on his neck. Esther walks her to the door and there's a moment where they could shake hands, but don't. Peggy's eyes stray up the staircase to the third floor where, faintly, Leba and Rebecca's voices can be heard. "Please give my regards to Mrs Barnes," Peggy says finally, and steps over the threshold, back out into the cool autumn air. There's nothing else for Esther to do except shut the door behind her, so she does.

She opens it again, barely a moment later.

"Miss Carter, wait," Esther calls. Peggy's already on the sidewalk, one hand on the little iron gate to swing it closed behind her. When Esther calls her name she looks up - her face frozen, eyes wide, her jaw clenched tight. But she waits for Esther to jog down the steps.

She's taller than Esther is, taller still in her neat heels. Her posture looks straight out of a fashion magazine. She looks at Esther with no hint of impatience, but without curiosity either. Just that flat dread that Esther knew in the war, braced for whatever was coming next.

What Esther wants to say is _sorry_. Sorry that they weren't ready for her. Sorry that Father had been looking for someone to hurt. Sorry that Peggy was grieving too, just like the rest of them.

What she comes out with is, "Were you in love with Steve?"

The effect on Peggy is both profound and barely noticeable. Her eyes widen, and redden, just at the corners. Her entire face slackens, and her shoulders sag. She brings a hand up to her heart but doesn't touch. She doesn't say anything. She smiles, just a little, and the answer is written on her face as clear as if she was shouting it to the rooftops.

"I was too," Esther says, and watches Peggy look away, that smile fixed on her face like it'll keep her together, if she can manage to keep hold of it. "Since I was a little girl. It's okay - he never thought of me like that, I was just Bucky's kid sister to him."

Peggy doesn't say anything to that, just stares out down the street, still as a statue. Her eyes dart close to Esther and then back away, like she'd like to say something, anything at all, but can't quite manage it. It's all right. Esther doesn't mind.

"Did you know him, before he - before?" she asks.

"Yes, I did," Peggy says. "He was -"

She sighs. "He was," Esther agrees, like Peggy had finished the sentence, and then, "Everyone loved Steve."

"That was hardly the impression I received," Peggy says, wryly - her jaw tightening. 

"Well," Esther says. "Everyone with any sense."

Miracle of all miracles, Peggy laughs.

"You two would have been so happy together," Esther says, impulsively, and Peggy smiles again - and Steve could have fallen in love with that smile, at the upturn of her mouth and the tilt of her chin, at the searching way she meets Esther's gaze, finally.

"Too bad we don't always get what we want," she says, quietly. 

Cars rattle by, on the uneven street. A block south, the trackless trolley hisses and snaps. The trees turned red and gold last week and are already shedding their leaves all over the sidewalk, swirling around Peggy and Esther's ankles. Somewhere, someone's playing music.

"I was so mad, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor," Esther says. The words drift out onto the wind and blow down the street, soft. "I wanted to sign up the next day and do whatever I could to avenge those poor sailors, who were sunk on those ships. I wanted to be a soldier myself. But Bucky, he was - he'd been drafted in 1940, you know, so he'd been a soldier for a long time. I couldn't figure why he wasn't as mad as Steve and I were, why he didn't wanna get over there as bad as we did. He laughed at me. Not mean-like, Bucky was _never_ mean, he was the _best_ -"

She takes a deep breath, and lets it out. "Anyway, he laughed at me and said, 'at least they died for something.' "

Peggy's brow creases, just a little, nothing that'll ruin her complexion - still searching Esther's face, waiting for the rest of it. 

"I don't think Steve would've minded so much," Esther says. "At least it was all for something. Not everyone gets to say that. He and Bucky, they gave the whole country hope. All those movies, and the comics, and the posters, and - I guess they're gonna make a radio drama, I don't know why. We heard thousands of men joined up cuz Captain America came through their little town, and thousands of people bought war bonds, or worked harder cuz Cap wasn't gonna quit. So at least it was for something."

"Yes," Peggy says, her eyes softening. "I suppose it must have been."  


  


-

  


It's quiet, on the first floor. Her room stays awash with the glow of the streetlights. People pass by, talking or laughing or nothing more than footsteps on the pavement, as close as if they were walking through the room itself. She doesn't mind. It's dark in her little room, and the ceiling is low and it'll be cold in the winter, but she likes it. In the mornings, she can hear Leba's little feet running over her head, Father's sleepy, dragging footsteps as he chases his granddaughter through the house. She listens to Rebecca and Mother move about the kitchen, while she gets ready for school.

It's been months since she moved down to the bottom bedroom. Since she and Rebecca sorted through Steve and Bucky's things, and Frank and his wife came to get his. They kept two of Steve's cast iron pans, and cut up some of his worn through shirts for rags. All of Steve and Bucky's books are up on the narrow, uneven shelves, although the Rosie and Cap posters migrated only as far as the middle room upstairs, where Leba sleeps. Steve's sketchbooks are up on her shelves too, droopy and used and comfortingly disordered.

Some nights it's too strange to sleep in her room, when she comes downstairs and is startled by its emptiness, by its utter lack of brothers. So many years that she'd clattered down the stairs and jumped straight onto Bucky's bed to wake him up, he and Steve curled tight around each other like puppies, Frank on his own bed dead to the world. More times than she could count where she'd shuffled into her brothers' room after a nightmare, and Bucky had chased away the last of her fright with stories, or held her until she fell back asleep.

Those nights, when she aches all over, she likes to look through Steve's sketchbooks. It's nice to see her brother, round cheeked and handsome and happy, instead of the serious man she still sees in the news reels and magazines sometimes, Captain America's right hand man. It's nice to see Steve, who never once drew himself but whose sense of humor curls wryly through his drawings. There are delicate watercolors of statues from the Museum of Metropolitan Art, and sketches of Brooklyn or the rest of the family, and a whole bunch of naked people that at first she paged hurriedly through. 

She reads the letter too, even though she knows it by heart, even if she knows all of Bucky's letters by heart. She likes this one the best, even though the first time she'd read it she'd shoved it back into the box and left it there for more than a week, haunted and confused. She keeps it underneath her mattress, away from the sketchbooks where Mother or Rebecca or maybe Leba and James might someday come look, and sometimes she tells herself stories about it, the _when's_ and _why's_ and _what then's_.

Maybe that's why it's her favorite, the mystery of it. She's looked through every book, through every scrap of junk that Bucky ever saved, and she's never found Steve's answer. There's no sign he ever read it at all, except the feel of the paper itself: worried soft and thin, like maybe someone else had read it over and over on lonely nights, holding it secret and close.  
  
  
_  
2/05/43_

_Dear Steve,_

_I did not believe there could be so much sand and dust in the world, and about half of it is in my underwear._

_I'm sorry I haven't written. I wasn't sure what to say to you, and anyway what is there to say? There's sand and dirt and I sleep in a hole in the ground more often than not, and I'm using up all my glad words writing my family. I can't pretend with you and it'd kill me to try._

_It has quit raining, finally, so now we can return to our busy schedule of killing as many Germans as we can get our hands on._

_I killed two men today. It was very easy. I'm a very good shot, especially with the rifle, and they were far away. It was very early, not quite dawn, and it was two men on patrol on the German side of the line. Crack crack and they fall down, easy as anything. After a little while their men came to take the bodies away and I didn't stop them. It seemed only fair. They're not the first people I killed and I'm sure they won't be the last. That makes war sound very exciting but to be honest it is the most boring thing you can imagine. We are stuck waiting around for the French to decide they want to kill the Axis instead of us. In between waiting around we move artillery from one pile to another, we get shot at by the Germans, and sometimes we go and shoot back._

_Some of the others threw their guts up after they've killed a German or Italian or whoever, but not me. The only thing that makes me sick is the damn sulfa tablets. I guess you don't know how it's going to take you until it does._

_I got hit the other day. Nothing serious. We were strafed by German planes and something hit the ground close to me. Got blinded by this big explosion of dirt and shrapnel, but when they cleaned me off it was mostly just mud. I've got a big cut all up the side of my face and there was a lot of blood, but it's not gonna scar. What's funny is that when it happened I thought, "Maybe this is it," and I wasn't scared - but today I'm going out of my skin waiting for it to happen again. I been scared a lot in life but I tell you pal it's never been like this._

_I know you wanna be over here. And I'd give a lot to have you with me. It eats me up sometimes just the way it did back home, which is why I think it's never gonna go away and maybe I should just say it while I have the chance to._

_You got my heart back there with you, and you got no idea. I tried to tell you, but you got a pretty thick skull and you don't listen to me much anyway. All those months you spent dreaming about the goddamn Army and all that time I spent dreaming about kissing you. I think you never heard me once trying to tell you I love you in all the ways a man can ever love a person. To be honest I never had the guts to ask if you did, but now I'm asking. What the hell do I have to lose, anyway?_

_I tried to put all this stuff away when the war happened and I knew sooner or later I'd be in it. I tried to be good but it turns out good doesn't have much to do with me. Steve - you got me, whether you want me or not. I'm sorry but that's the way it is._

_That's a lie, I'm not sorry. About anything._

_I won't be sending this to you. They'd have me out on a blue ticket home and that'd be the end of me. But I had to get it out on paper anyway. So I hope you like the thought of me carrying around a love letter to you while I'm sleeping in holes and digging sand out of my asshole and getting shot at._

_Let's laugh about it when I come home, okay? I swear I'll make you happy if you give me a chance._

_All my love,  
Bucky_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who has left comments or who have reblogged the chapter posts in the last few days. I know that 20,000 words of what are essentially OC's is not appealing to everyone, and I'm really grateful for the positive response I've gotten so far. Thank you all so, so much for reading.
> 
> There's a final "chapter" to this story, of some of the historical resources I used to write this story and it's "prequel," When I Put Away Childish Things. If you're into that, click on through.
> 
> If you like Captain America, Brooklyn, politics and cat pictures, I'm on tumbler as [hansbekhart](http://hansbekhart.tumblr.com/), and I love new friends. I'm 1000% less hysterical these days now that the snow here has melted, probably.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Barnes family, during The First Avenger.
> 
> Or, a lot of research.

  
**General Resources**

[Marvel Cinematic Universe Timeline](http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/5395/A-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-Timeline) \- I work pretty heavily from this timeline, although some dates were fudged or deliberately ignored for storytelling purposes.

[1940s New York](http://www.1940snewyork.com/) \- I linked to this in the first story, but it is so, so useful. Neighborhoods in New York back in the day were vastly different from what they are today - not just in racial and economic makeup, but also each neighborhood’s boundaries. A lot of the neighborhoods you might be familiar with - TriBeCa, for example - didn’t actually exist until the last decade or two, or might have existed as a much larger neighborhood before real estate developers began carving them up to sell as new and exciting places to live. I.e. huge chunks of Bushwick being renamed East Williamsburg, and East Kills vanishing entirely. I think it’s also a great resource if you want to take Steve, Bucky and any of their friends to different neighborhoods, that aren’t commonly mentioned in Cap fics. It also shows median rent for apartments, which is super cool.

[Forgotten New York](http://forgotten-ny.com/tag/brooklyn/) \- This is a really, really cool website. It goes in depth into more neighborhoods than you realize we have in New York, uncovering random architectural details and historical tidbits about the things we see every day. So much of NYC is old as hell, comparatively speaking. In my years in New York, I’ve only once lived in a building that didn’t pre-date World War 2. We put new facades on the buildings, and remodel the inside if you’re lucky, but the bones are still very similar to what Steve and Bucky would have known, growing up - particularly in much of in Brooklyn.

[LIFE Magazine - 1940s](http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1940s.html) \- Almost all of LIFE Magazine’s old issues are up online and free to read through! LIFE is a great resource for figuring out what the public did or didn’t know about during the war. They gave a lot of coverage to World War 2 from very early on, and had a huge readership.

[NYC Subway Historical Maps](http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Historical_Maps#1940-1960) \- One of the fastest ways I know whether someone lives here or has done their research into a story set in NYC is how much the subway figures into the story. New Yorkers are obsessed with geography and logistics. We always know what neighborhood we’re in, what the nearest train lines are, what the best way is to get from point A to point B (hotly debated) and how often each train line is likely to run on a given day or time. Our lives _center around transportation_. The subway system in Steve and Bucky’s day was sort of different, but not as much as you’d expect. Most of our active subway stations date back to their era or before, but they were run by several different companies before being taken over the city. If you explore the site, also, it has a huge amount of information on historical trains, oddities in the New York subway system, and is overall just a really fascinating resource.

[Chabad Lubavitch](http://www.chabad.org/) \- Okay, this is a weird one, but I use Chabad’s website as my main source of information for Jewish religious practices. For anyone unfamiliar with Chabad, they’re a subsect of Orthodox Judaism headquartered in Brooklyn who function basically missionaries to entice non-practicing or secular Jews back into religious observance. They are suuuuper fascinating, and for anyone who might be interested in learning more about their history, I recommend reading [The Rebbe’s Army](http://www.amazon.com/Rebbes-Army-Inside-World-Chabad-Lubavitch/dp/0805211381/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427653262&sr=8-1&keywords=rebbe%27s+army). 

I would caution that Chabad is hardly the be all and end all of Judaism philosophy and practices, and in fact differs quite a lot from modern American Jewish culture, in my understanding. I spent two years working at SY companies (who are another [super fascinating group of people](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/magazine/14syrians-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), and was a lot like working for the Mafia), and I’ve lived most of my years in Brooklyn on the edge of one Hasidic neighborhood or another. Deeply orthodox, kabbalistic belief is what I’m most familiar with, and most people I’ve had in depth conversations with about their faith have been Ashkenzi. I like using Chabad’s resources because they’re very easy to understand for a non Jewish person, given that they were written for non practicing Jewish people to read and better understand their heritage. 

 

As a historical resource, I also can’t recommend YouTube highly enough. I watch a ton of YouTube videos while researching different topics. New York is a very specific place, and the 1930’s/1940s were very specific decades. Watching videos, rather than only reading accounts or even looking at old photographs, can give you a much better idea of how people moved, spoke, dressed, how they looked, etc. 

Some of my favorites:  
[Danger: Women At Work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pblYHQHBKSM) \- 1940s educational film training women newly entering the work force.  


[Rosie The Riveter: Real Women Workers of WWII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04VNBM1PqR8)

[Long Gone: Brooklyn Elevated Lines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPWVQzN7AF8) \- This is REALLY COOL but probably only if you really love trains or the soothing sounds of this guy’s voice (Or really want to write a story about Steve and Bucky traveling long way on an elevated line? That'd be cool, someone should write that). Someone stuck a camera to one of the elevated lines that used to go through downtown Brooklyn, and this dude will narrate you all the way through the Els of Brooklyn from the …. 1920s? 1930s? 

[Excerpt from The Naked City (1948)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUO-tnJWhas) \- awesome shots of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg Bridge. Had such a weird moment of deja vu, looking at what used to be the pedestrian entrance, on the Manhattan side of the bridge.

Wanna hear what (one of) the classic Brooklyn accent(s) sounds like? Well, [take a listen to Jimmy Cagney](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spU1MNlU1ws). Sebastian Stan certainly did. I love accents and Brooklyn in particular. I have a few friends who grew up in south Brooklyn and still sound like this, and it gives me a lot of joy. Jimmy Cagney is also great (give Angels With Dirty Faces a watch, if you can - it’s fucking amazing and hilarious).

[WW2: Psychiatric Procedures in the Combat Arena](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfgsGe64yzA)

  
  
**Story Specific Resources**

[Brooklyn Navy Yard](http://turnstiletours.com/tours/brooklyn-navy-yard/world-war-ii-tour-of-the-brooklyn-navy-yard/) \- earlier this year, I went on a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yards, centered around the Yard’s importance during World War 2. A lot of what’s referenced in this story was learned on that tour, which I totally recommend to anyone who lives in the NYC area or who is visiting and would like to do some off the beaten path touristing. 

The Brooklyn Navy Yard built both the USS Arizona - one of the ships sunk during the attack at Pearl Harbor, which is now part of the memorial - and the USS Missouri - which was where the peace treaty with Japan was signed, bringing an end to World War 2. The launching of the USS Missouri in this story is based on historical accounts of the era.

[Lowe’s King Theatre](http://www.nycedc.com/project/kings-theatre) \- This gorgeous theatre was recently restored to its former glory and reopened. I haven’t been there yet, but it looks amaaaaazing.

[LIFE Magazine - Rare Photos from North African Campaign](http://life.time.com/history/world-war-ii-rare-and-classic-photos-from-the-north-african-campaign/#1) \- I love scrolling through these photo archives.

[New York & the Civil Rights Movement](http://www.nyc.gov/html/cchr/justice/downloads/pdf/how_new_york_changes_the_civil_rights_movement.pdf) \- originally I’d planned for Bethany to have a much larger role than she ended up with, but I did find this interesting article on segregation in New York City.

[Service Flags](http://www.usflag.org/history/serviceflag.html%E2%80%9D) \- for anyone wondering what Peggy was staring at in the last scene, families with sons in service would hang flags in their windows. It was popularized in WW2, but continues to this day. When a soldier was killed, their blue star would be covered up with gold.

[Haggadah](http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm) \- text from the Haggadah read during the story was taken from the English language version available from Chabad.

  


 

Finally, I did want to note that the camp liberation mentioned briefly during the Passover scene is the liberation of Auschwitz. A few years ago, I had the honor of hearing Elie Wisel speak, who was instrumental in bringing about our cultural understanding of the Holocaust. He and his family were imprisoned in Auschwitz, and part of the 60,000 or so people who were marched out of the camp days before the Soviet liberation. I was … very hesitant to include any mention of the Holocaust in the story. It’s obviously not a subject that I want to touch on very lightly in a fanfic story, no matter how in depth I can get about research. At the same time it felt a little disingenuous to write a story about a (mostly) Jewish family during World War II and not at least brush on it, as part of the larger context that they and everyone else in the world was living at the time - similar to incorporating the racism that Bethany and her sister experience, and the anti-Semitism that Esther and her family experience.

There was a lot I wanted to say with this story. I find outsider POV super fascinating, and was really charmed by the idea of Steve Rogers: Historical Figure, and how incredibly surreal that must have been to all the people who knew him before he became Captain America. There's a stark difference in the tiny Steve we see on screen - who is grumpy, argumentative and narrowly focused to the point of obliviousness - and the historical idea that Steve himself meets in The Avengers - who is noble, upright and an American Ideal ... which is a stark difference in characterization that we see in fandom as well. 

I also really love the idea of Bucky Barnes _outside_ of the context of Steve Rogers - as the main character in his own narrative journey, as most of are in our own heads, and how his family would see him as well. I came to really love Bucky’s family in the process of writing the first story of this series, and wanted to spend more time with them. I wanted to know how they'd feel about being swept up in the propaganda avalanche of Captain America and His Howling Commandos, and how they might lose control of their own story, just as much as Steve and Bucky lost control of theirs. 

If anyone has any questions about anything in particular, or is looking for other resources or information, please don't hesitate to ask. :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for "For the dead there is no story" by hansbekhart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5703082) by [RunawayMarbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayMarbles/pseuds/RunawayMarbles)
  * [For the Living](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986692) by [Scappodaqui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui/pseuds/Scappodaqui)




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